


Self Defense

by ShevatheGun



Category: DCU (Comics), Justice League & Justice League Unlimited (Cartoons), Smallville, Superman - All Media Types, Superman: The Animated Series
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Race Changes, Clark and Lex are both ladies and they're gonna kiss, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Romance, F/F, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Intersex Character, Minor Character Death, Past Child Abuse, Political Intrigue, Slow Burn, Snark, The West Wing References, Trans Female Character, UST, tfw your fan fiction presidential campaign is more realistic than real life, whose canon is it anyway
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2019-11-04 10:29:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 87,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17896751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShevatheGun/pseuds/ShevatheGun
Summary: After ten years as nemeses, Clara Kent could say with a relative degree of certainty that she knew all there was to know about Lex Luthor. But when a murder investigation into the death of her father derails Lex's presidential campaign, Clara's forced to reconsider. Now, marooned in an alternate universe, Clara and Lex must rely on one another to get home in spite of their history - both that which they share, and that which Lex has kept buried for a long, long time.





	1. Setup

**Author's Note:**

> If you can believe it, I have been working on this fic, in some capacity or another, since 2013.
> 
> It's been done and redone - written and rewritten so many times since then. At one point, I scrapped almost 180k words for this concept. But it's finally happening. Here it is. Ta-da. 
> 
> Such huge thanks to every single person who worked with me on this through the years (many of you for all six of them). The list of help I've had is exhaustive, but a big thanks to Seraphatonin, Lani, Yukoutena, Riza, Hobbs & Mo, among many others, for acting as my readers, editors, and sounding boards for literal years. I also owe a huge shoutout to my favorite Clex authors throughout the years, Astolat and Lanning chief among them. 
> 
> Warnings will be provided chapter by chapter to avoid spoilers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tws for this chapter: implied child abuse and some minor canon-appropriate violence. Also some self-harm (not that Lex sees it that way), implied substance abuse, and light suicidal ideation. Oh. And murder. There's a murder also.
> 
> EDIT 04/23/19: I will be adding illustrations to each chapter from hereon out, starting with the cover I uploaded today. ;)

She watches it happen. It comes over him slowly - his hands begin to shake, and his pauses lengthen. His grand lecture loses its rhythm. He coughs, tries to wash the dryness out of his mouth. His eyebrows purse, he thumps his chest a little. The first stream of blood drips from his nose, trailing down to his lip. He dabs at it with his napkin, clearly not realizing what it is - when the cloth comes away stained with red, Lex sees his mind begin to race, his heart leaping frantically around the cage of his ribs. Pity. If he could stay calm, he might keep the poison from fully circulating. His eyes dart around the room trying to identify the culprit before he finally lands on hers, eyes watery and scared, and for the first time in her life Lex sees him for the pathetic old man he is.

“How did you do it?” Lionel gasps. “The wine? It's the wine, isn't it - the salad? The steak? You have to tell me.” He reaches across the table and clamps his hand tight around Lex's wrist, holding so tight she could almost believe he isn’t dying. She squares her jaw and lifts at her watch. Only a few more minutes left.

“ _Alexandra_ ,” he snarls, and it's a frightening, hungry sound. He grips so tight that she feels a bruise searing her skin. “You have to tell me. How? How?”

Lex gazes at him impassively as he chokes and gasps. Frothy spit dots his lips along with a thin pink sheen.

“You owe me this,” he gasps between his teeth. “Lex! Tell me! Tell me how you did it!”

And Lex, who has conquered the world with her silver tongue, smiles a slow, cold smile and says nothing. His hand, hot iron around her wrist, is the last thing to go slack. She finishes her wine before calling the paramedics, admiring how ugly he looks in death, twisted and gnarled as a tree.

It’s five years before they arrest her for it - and of course they'd do it in Iowa, mid-caucus. When they strap the silver cuffs onto her wrists, it feels just like his hand did that night: like the beginning of the end.

* * *

 

* * *

 

Six weeks and several hundred billed hours later, the judge throws the case out and Lex is cleared for release. They hand over her effects in a paper bag, which is probably the single cheapest thing her Balenciaga pumps have ever come into contact with. She dresses quickly, efficiently, keeping her makeup application light and practical. The intake officer gives her a dirty look as she applies a quick spritz of her Bulgari cologne, and eyes her gleaming Patek Phillipe watch with an envy so thick it practically billows off her. Lex scoffs and straightens her jacket.

“Keep dreaming,” she sneers, and with that she’s out the door, her clothes and her back straight. She walks slowly down the asphalt path to the release gate, and waits patiently to be released into the sea of reporters, who crash like waves all around her. Her Cartier sunglasses dim the spasmodic flash of bulbs as their questions crescendo to an unparseable din.

“Lex!”

“Lex! Lex, over here!”

“Lex, how does it feel to be free?”

“Lex, are you aware that you’re still the frontrunner for the Republican nomination?”

“Lex!”

“Luthor! How does it feel to serve only six weeks in jail for murdering your own father?”

She flicks her gaze to Lois and instantly regrets it. Jimmy Olson catches her at it and the cameras alight in a flurry of flashes and clicks. She can barely even make Lois out through the glare of the lights, but she can feel her grinning nonetheless. But it’s a false victory - she’s made it to the curb, and Mercy’s there to meet her. Lex crosses in front of the car - the silver Porsche, almost like she knew Lex would need a pick-me-up first thing this morning - and Mercy crosses behind it, opening the passenger door so sharply that she takes out several reporters, and a few more are forced to leap out of her way. She glowers out at the crowd, looking ready to bite, and Lex can’t help but smile.

She revs the engine, relishing the feeling of power under her hands, ready to spring forth at her command. Mercy takes her seat and Lex rolls down the window just so Lois can hear her.

“Better luck next time, Lane.”

She blows a kiss while Mercy glares, and then she throws the car into gear and peels out, rocketing down the road, letting the exhilaration possess her completely.

As they’re pulling onto the freeway, she can feel Mercy watching her.

“You can say you missed me.”

Mercy purses her lips and says nothing, but as she brings Lex’s itinerary up, Lex could swear she sees a rare secret smile curl at the edge of her mouth.

“You’re scheduled to meet Beverly on the tarmac at MTA. Wheels up in two hours. Next campaign stop’s in Florida.”

“Excellent,” Lex purrs, putting the pedal to the floor. “I could use a little sun.”

Mercy’s secret smile grows a little bigger, and Lex feels like she’s already home.

* * *

 

The rally is riotous.

The humid air in downtown Miami sings with a sweet, scintillating spring heat, and when she walks onstage the crowd roars so loud it leaves her ears ringing. She opens her arms and receives their applause for a full minute. Bev quoted the numbers to her backstage: 18,000 people and more in the parking lot clamoring to be let in. Every one of her remarks is punctuated by deafening applause. The chanting rattles her bones. They run almost thirty minutes over. By the time she walks down the steps of the stage, she's high on it, heady. Bev is waiting with a flute of champagne that doesn't seem nearly as premature as it should. Her team whoops and cheers as she walks into the room, and for just a second Lex feels almost at peace.

And that, of course, is when Mercy appears at her elbow to tell her that Steve Hodder’s waiting in her dressing room. Lex prods her tongue against her cheek, downs her glass of champagne, and grabs another on her way down the hall. She finds Hodder in her office reading her copy of _The Daily Planet_ , looking somehow more bald and portly than usual in his cheap gray suit. He whistles as she comes in.

“They’re telling me you’ve got eighteen thousand people out there. Vender says they could’ve sold another ten thousand at least if they weren’t at capacity.”

Lex shrugs, keeping her free hand in her pocket. “What can I say? It’s a good show.”

Hodder grins, folding the paper and tossing it back on her dressing table. “Yeah. I’ve gotta say, Ms. Luthor - not sure I’ve ever seen a candidate work ‘em quite like you. Certainly haven’t seen anybody bring in these kinds of crowds. You ever get nervous up there?”

Lex gives him the barest hint of a polite smile. “No.”

“Don’t know how you do it.” Then, after a moment: “How are you doin’?”

“I’m delightful, Steve. What brings you to Miami?”

Hodder looks at her, then takes a deep breath and blows it out. He claps his hands on his knees. “Well… it occurred to me we might need to check in.”

“Really.” It’s not a question.

“They’re telling me you’ve got more campaign stops planned.”

“Of course I do, Steve. I’m running for president.”

“You’re campaigning for the nomination,” Hodder says.

“I’m going to get the nomination,” she tells him.

Hodder sighs, nodding a little. “Yeah, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“I’m thirty points ahead in the polls, Steve.”

“Lex…” Hodder sighs again, then tries another polite smile. “We really need you to put your inertia behind another candidate.”

Lex bares her teeth right back, but she isn’t smiling. “And why on Earth would I do that?”

“We need to make sure we’re being consistent in our platform.”

“Your platform being that you’d like to win.”

“Yeah.”

“How lucky you are then that I’m the Republican ticket.”

“You’re not. Not yet. And hopefully never - Lex, the Republican base will not elect a felon as President of the United States.”

“I haven’t been convicted of anything,” Lex sneers.

Hodder links his hands together, giving her an exasperated look. “You were plausibly accused of murder. That’s public knowledge, Lex - it would be clinically insane for us to nominate you at this point. Frankly, I didn’t realize that wouldn’t go without saying.”

The urge to kill him in that moment is so intense, Lex is genuinely surprised to come back to herself and find that she has, in fact, not shattered her glass against the edge of the table and buried it in his jugular. A potent rage buzzes just under the surface of her skin.

“Look,” Hodder says, reading her speechlessness completely wrong. “We need somebody solid to run against Hirono. You’ve got a good roster to choose from. Reeves is running on a similar platform: pro-business, pro-gun, pro-state’s rights, anti-vigilante. He’s like you. He loves the free market and hates Batman.”

“Superwoman,” Lex says through her teeth.

“Yeah, sure. What’d I say?”

“Listen to me, Steve,” Lex says, “and listen closely: the next time Arthur Reeves pulls my numbers, he can have the nomination. But I don’t do charity. I have the votes, he doesn’t.”

“He has the delegates,” Hodder says. “You don’t.”

God, what she would do for a gun right about now.

“Lex,” Hodder says. “We really need you to back another candidate and withdraw from the running. And we’re not really asking.”

“Eat shit. You don’t tell me what to do.”

Hodder snorts, lifts his hands. “Well. I guess we’re done with pleasantries, huh?”

“We both know it’s only a matter of time before I'm running things, Steve,” Lex spits, venomous as a cobra. “I'm doing GOP leadership a favor by offering you a chance to get on before the train leaves the station. But I don't need you. I never have. The offer was merely a courtesy.”

“You need the backing of a major party,” Hodder says. “I know you know that - it’s why you changed your party affiliation from Independent to Republican a few years back. I know the Dems won’t have you. And if you run on the Independent ticket, you’re gonna get crushed.”

Lex hums like she’s thinking, and then tosses her champagne in Hodder’s face. He cries out and shakes his head, sputtering and dripping.

“It’s time for you to go, Steve.”

Mercy seems to sense she’s needed - she’s through the door almost before Lex has it open, grabbing Hodder by the back of the neck and hauling him out into the hallway.

“That’s assault,” Hodder spits. “You think I won’t take you to court?”

“You’ve just seen what happens to the people dumb enough to take me to court. But if you’d really like to impress your idiocy on me, Steve, be my guest.”

“Y’know,” Hodder snarls, cheeks flushed dark red, “I considered your father a friend.”

Hatred strikes Lex’s heart like lightning, turning her to cold diamond from the inside out.

“I promise you,” she says, “the feeling wasn’t mutual.”

Mercy escorts him out before he can get another word in edgewise. Lex is left alone in her dressing room with a deafening silence, her whole body aching with rage. She makes it exactly twelve seconds before she crushes the empty champagne glass in her hand, letting the pieces carve into her skin.

* * *

 

Mercy drives them to the hotel while Charity carefully removes the glass from Lex’s palm and sutures the wound with the new dermagen model. Lex approved the consumer market release through her COO earlier this afternoon - she’s glad to see that it the R&D logs weren’t exaggerating. Not that she would mind traditional sutures, but in her current temper she’s liable to rip them out. She settles for the glossy soft skin the dermagen leaves behind, and Mercy’s steady fury behind the wheel.

Upon arriving in the penthouse, she pours herself a drink - cognac, perfectly aged - downs it like it’s a cheap shot. She then pauses to assess her lingering anger for moment before she whips her hand down and smashes the glass on the marble floor. Satisfied, she pours herself another, and takes it out onto the balcony. She needs to air out her temper.

She ends up floating, instead, dangling by her lapels off of Superwoman’s fists, and that, she thinks, is really what she should’ve expected.

“Well this just seems overly dramatic,” she says.

“Little late for a pity party, isn’t it Luthor?”

Lex reaches around her glass and flicks her Kryptonite ring to its second setting. “Oh, I wouldn’t if I were you. I’m not really in the mood for entertaining.”

Before Superwoman can release her, Lex jabs her in the stomach - her ring makes a sound like a cattle prod, and Superwoman goes flying in an arc of green electricity. Lex lands in a skid and dusts off her lapels - just in time for Superwoman to shoulder-check her back into the couch, knocking the wind out of her. It screeches across the tile, and Lex hears one of the legs snap off before it sags. Her second glass of cognac crashes to the floor. Lex presses a hand to her chest, trying to get her breath back.

Superwoman touches down on the balcony and steps into the penthouse, glass crunching under her boots. She has a distinct Archangel of Vengeance vibe going, face serious, brown skin gleaming in the moonlight, sweet silky twists of her hair feathering along her cheeks - Lex’s breathlessness may not be entirely due to the shoulder-check.

“I did wonder why you weren't with Lois this afternoon,” she manages to say.

Superwoman’s eyes narrow. Lex knows how she hates to mix business and pleasure. God, she looks good. Even after just six weeks, Lex finds she’s missed seeing her in person, feeling the raw, unrivaled power billowing off her, imposing itself like gravity. “Consider this your homecoming,” Superwoman says.

“I’m flattered.” Lex makes to sit up, flicking the dial on her ring to up the charge, but Superwoman gets there first, grabbing her by the wrist and spinning her, pinning it up against her back, shoving her chest-first up against the couch. The effortlessness of it is enough to make Lex wet, even if it makes her furious. She hates when she plays smart - always prefers Superwoman’s ‘cavewoman lawyer’ days to her ‘Batman lite’ days.

“Twelve hours out of jail, and you’re going to attack me?” she asks. She squeezes just so and Lex feels the bone of her wrist give an ominous whine.

“Call it self defense,” Lex hisses. Superwoman steps too close and Lex curls her fingers in - the ring makes contact and Superwoman’s ripped backwards. Lex hears her go tumbling, crashing through the table and into the entertainment system. She stands up and kicks off her heels, shrugging off her jacket and rolling up her sleeves. The room stinks of burnt lycra. Superwoman blows her hair out of her face and gets to her feet - her costume is singed, the fabric blackened along her abs.

“I suppose I have you to thank for that charming little detour to Stryker’s,” Lex says, slowly padding forward. The old hatred curls in her chest again, sliding up her throat like bile. “How nice that my late father can count you among his _many_ friends.”

Superwoman shakes her head. “You got sloppy, Lex. Metro PD didn’t need my help.”

Lex pauses - shame and dismay jabs her in the back, puncturing her cool. It takes her a moment to process the implication, and after that she’s on the edge of panic. _Didn’t need her help?_ That can’t be right. Somehow, the implication that Metro PD took her to trial without any superpowered assistance is the most destabilizing thing anyone’s said to her all day.

Superwoman reaches out with her foot and sweeps the coffee table - lying in two splintered halves between them - out of the way. Lex swallows thickly, trying to hide how rattled she is, but Superwoman sees through her and takes another verbal swing while the swinging is good.

“I came to tell you to quit while you’re ahead.”

Lex lets out a bark of surprised laughter. “You’re here to discuss my _polling numbers_?”

“If you think for a second I’m going to let you become President of the United States, you’re dreaming.”

They circle each other slowly - Lex carefully placing her feet to avoid broken wood and glass, and the scattered accoutrements that once rested on the coffee table. “Color me shocked that you aren’t the biggest fan of a functioning democracy. If you don’t want me to be the President, you can cast a ballot like anyone else.” She pauses. “...actually. No, I suppose you can’t.”

Superwoman looks up from where she’s been watching Lex’s feet, brow creased with confusion. “What?”

“It’s not as though you can register to vote.” Lex narrows her eyes. “You _are_ the definition of an illegal alien - you realize that, don’t you? If you register to vote, that would constitute fraud.”

“Lex,” Superwoman growls, annoyance showing through that holier-than-thou facade of hers for the first time all evening.

Lex tuts her tongue, safe behind her banter, floating on a tipsy sea of shame, ready to strike the second she gets close. “Naughty, naughty. Now who’s going to jail? Though I suppose the voter fraud might fall behind the years of vigilantism, in terms of sentencing...”

Superwoman shakes her head a little, the corner of her mouth raised in a snarl. “God, you really tick me off.”

Lex spins the wheel of her ring, preparing another charge, savoring the way the electricity makes the whole room sing. “Oh, darling… I assure you the feeling is mutual.”

Superwoman darts forward faster than her eyes can see, but Lex is ready for it - her hand connects with Superwoman’s chest and she goes tumbling, bouncing on the tile floor hard enough to splinter it. But she’s up much quicker this time, faster than Lex can prepare a second charge, and her hands close around Lex’s wrists in a blur as she slams her back against the wall. Lex curls her hands into fists, but Superwoman holds her pinned against the wall a few inches off the floor with a force Lex’s human muscles can’t contest. She’s standing so close Lex can feel her heat, taste her breath, and it makes goosebumps run up her chest.

“I’m not the fraud here, Luthor.”

“Oh, we both know that’s not true,” Lex says, savoring her nearness, the way she can smell her bitterness on every word.

Superwoman’s grip tightens. “Drop out of the race.”

“Not on your life,” Lex purrs.

“If you don’t,” Superwoman says, and she’s so close that Lex could bite her if only she had enough leverage. “I promise, Luthor - I will make _sure_ you lose.”

Lex grins, and from across the room she hears the security pad beside the door chirp. “Good luck with that. May the best authoritarian win.”

Superwoman scowls, beautiful face flaring openly with contempt. But the door slides open and Mercy appears with her gun at the ready, kryptonite rounds making the chamber glow, finger on the trigger.

“Time’s up,” Lex says. She lifts her foot and shoves Superwoman back with a kick in the chest, and she goes, oddly obedient now that there are live rounds in the room. She springs through the open sliding glass door before Mercy can take her first shot - her silencer dulls the sound as one bullet zips through the couch, the other pinging off the railing of the balcony.

Lex watches her go with both hands in her pockets. Miami’s neon nightscape paints her in purples and pinks, catching in her hair and in her eyes, caressing her statuesque form, and then, before Mercy can get in a killing blow she rockets into the sky, no doubt ascending to Olympus where she belongs. Mercy heads out to the balcony to be sure she’s gone, punctuating her frustration with an impotent snarl.

Lex waves her off. “Let her go,” she says, as though they really have a choice. Mercy takes a step back, still glaring vengefully up at the sky.

“I’ll call house cleaning,” she says, with obvious reluctance.

“Leave it,” Lex says, stepping over the wreckage. She always likes a little something to remember her by, and the bruises will fade in a few hours. The housekeeping bill will give her something to look forward to. In the meantime, she dials Bev.

“It’s me,” she says. “Get ready to turn it up - we’re going on offense.”

* * *

 

It’s half past three before Clara gets home. She lets herself in through the window beside the fire escape and tries to rub the kink out of her neck. She runs a little water in the kitchen sink, wincing at the pile of dirty dishes, and splashes a little on her face. She changes out of her costume, hangs it up behind the false panel in her closet, and puts on a ratty, oversized t-shirt and a pair of boxers that pass the smell test. She pulls her phone off the charger in the kitchen where it’s rigged to the power stip plugged into the only outlet that works. She has fourteen missed calls from Lois, the most recent one only a few minutes old. She sighs and redials, propping the phone against her ear as she puts water in the kettle and turns the gas stove on.

Lois picks up on the second ring. “Christ, did you just get home?”

Clara can hear the ambient noise of the bullpen behind her. “That’s a pretty accusatory tone for somebody who’s still at the office.” She sets the kettle on the stove and repositions her phone. “You realize we have to be in in less than four hours - what’s your plan? Sleep through the morning edition?”

“I don’t sleep during election season,” Lois says, which is a lie of omission if Clara’s ever heard one - she doesn’t sleep any other time of the year, either. “I’m seventy-eight percent caffeine at this point, anyway. Where the hell have you been?”

“Miami,” Clara says. “Among other places.”

“You with the mystique. Just tell me you went to see her, Smallville. It’s not like I don’t already know.”

Clara sighs through her nose and puts a hand to her head. “Yeah.”

“Well? Did you get anything?”

“I got tazed.”

“Tazed? By who, Zeus?”

“She’s got a new ring configuration she’s testing out.” Clara reaches down to rub at her side - hours later it still aches. The skin is pink and raw under her shirt. “Threw me into a wall. Hurts like…”

“Hell? Well, she is Beelzebub, so that doesn’t really come as a surprise. Sort that out with your tailor and your physician. I meant did you get anything _useful._ ”

“Well, she’s gonna lose the election, I know that much.”

“She’s going to _what_? I’m sorry, can you say that again? I just experienced what I guess you’d call ‘joy’ for the first time in my life, and it felt suspiciously close to having a stroke.”

“She met with the Chairman of the Republican National Committee after the rally - didn’t leave happy.”

“Oh, just tell me you heard the whole thing.”

Obviously she did hear the whole thing, but if she admits to that, she’ll have to admit she was at the rally, and stuck around long enough to follow Lex back to her hotel. Even by her own standards, that’s a little obsessive. Besides that, she’s always been uncomfortable passing along anything she hears while super-eavesdropping to Lois or her editors, lest she wind up seeing it in print.

“She doesn’t have the delegates, we knew that already,” is all Clara will say. “Looks like the RNC might be trying to get her bow out.”

“Oh, you think they’re shaking now, you just wait ‘til today’s issue goes to print.” Clara can hear Lois grinning, smug with pride. “We’re blowing the absolute lid off this thing - I got the records of the entire deposition from the pre-trial. It’s time to take Lex Luthor to the court of public opinion.”

Clara closes her eyes, brow knit. She bites her cheek, listening to the water boil. “Lo… I wanted to talk to you about that.”

“About what? Lex Luthor being a murderer? That’s nothing we didn’t already know. Patricide seems like a little much even by her standards, but I mean, I’ve met Lionel Luthor. So at least I get where she’s coming from. Doesn’t mean we can’t make good and sure she’s not the next President of the United States.”

“She won’t be.”

“Not after this.”

“Lois.” Clara pauses. She lets her breath out. It makes her sick to even think the words, let alone say them. “...Lois, I need you to lay off. For a bit.”

“...what do you mean?”

“Lois--”

“What the hell do you mean?”

“I just need you to back off for a while.”

“Why the hell would I do that?”

“Because I’m asking you to.”

“ _Why?_ ”

“Listen…” Clara folds her arms, catching the phone against her shoulder again. “I took a first pass at a piece on the nomination. I’ll send it your way, we can run that instead.” From the stove, the kettle begins its first soft, low whine.

“No way, Kent,” Lois snarls, “not a chance. You want me to bench this, you’re going to have to give me a damn good reason.”

“It’s…” Clara’s words snag again, and she blows out her frustration. “Terms of engagement,” she says.

“What are you talking about? Kent - let me make this very clear to you: I am running this story. Period, exclamation point, end of sentence. You do not call me at three am in the morning after avoiding me all day and tell me to shut it down. This is _news_ \- I don’t care about your weird little honor code, the future of American democracy is at stake here, and if you think I’m going to let you get in the way of that, you’ve got another thing coming.”

“ _Lois_ ,” she says, letting Superwoman steel infect her tone.

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t run this,” Lois snaps. “Give me one single, solitary good reason.”

“Because it’s _family._ Family is off-limits.”

The kettle is shrieking on the stove, and Clara fumbles to pull it off the heat, gritting her teeth. On the other end of the line, Lois has gone weirdly quiet. Clara barrels on, knowing this is probably the last chance she’ll have to get a word in edgewise. She can’t restrain her frustration and she doesn’t try.

“Listen to me. She stays out of Smallville. She doesn’t threaten you, or my moms, or Jimmy. Family’s off-limits. She knows that, she’s always respected it. Those are the terms of engagement. Just… Lo, I never ask you to do this. But I’m serious. Her whole life is public. This… this is private. I need you to leave it alone. Not forever. But for right now.” She closes her eyes, bows her head, one hand to her temple. “Please.”

Lois is quiet for a while on the other end of the phone. Clara hears her fingers drumming against the receiver. Then, finally, she sighs.

“Fine. I’m not looking to cede the moral high ground to Lex Luthor of all people.” Clara hears her keyboard clack in two swift, decisive moves - Ctrl+A, Del. There’s another short silence, but Clara can feel Lois choosing her next words carefully, and she waits for them. “Did she seriously seem that bad to you?”

Clara knows she can’t answer that question without admitting that she spent the whole day observing Lex in a way no human can - that she spent all day moving between libraries and restaurants and buildings where she could watch without being seen, using her x-ray vision to stare at Lex from miles away, her superhearing to overhear every private conversation and the telltale throb of Lex’s heartbeat. That she watched Lex not just among the people, not just in private conversation with Mercy or with Steve Hodder, but when she thought she was alone, when she had every reason to. That she watched the way Lex’s face settles into a blank mask the instant she isn’t “on” and performing for her eager fans. That she saw the way Lex’s hand keeps finding its way to her full lips, running slowly over the scar that digs a soft pink streak through Lex's top lip and pricks a fang on the cushion of her lower lip. That she saw Lex crush a champagne flute and stand still as blood spilled down her hand. That she tallied Lex’s drinks - a glass of red wine on the plane, two glasses of champagne after the rally (even if the majority of one ended up in Steve Hodder’s face), and another glass of cognac when she got to the hotel. That she knows from speaking with the director at Stryker’s that Lex spent all six weeks there in solitary, at her own request.

But she thinks Lois probably knows what she’s been up to, and will no matter what she says. So she just says,

“Yeah.”

and leaves it at that.

* * *

 

They end up workshopping the article until a quarter to five. Clara’s sleepytime tea goes ice cold on the counter and she has to warm it up in the microwave. Lois finally sends her to bed. “No, I’ll finish up. I don’t want to see you before noon, you hear me, Smallville?”

“You’re going to add that paragraph about the religious right?”

“I’m going to add whatever I want, up to and including sedatives in your tea.”

“I’ll text you.”

“Shut up and get lost.”

“Love you, too.”

Lois hangs up on her, but Clara smiles a little nonetheless. She sips her tea, now just a scooch too hot, and heads for the bedroom. Before she leaves the room, she glances at her JL comm link mounted on the windowsill. It’s blinking - someone’s trying to contact her, and she knows who. Her smile drops off her face and she sighs, ducking under the doorframe in full retreat.

She sets her tea down and flops over backwards, throwing an arm over her face. Outside, half the city is already up - street cleaners and sanitation workers and house cleaners already out and about; service workers trading shifts, the graveyard headed home, the openers headed out. The commuter buses are already running. Coffee houses are opening to join the bodegas and convenience stores in their dead-eyed watch over Metropolis’ tired, huddled masses. The morning is turning a soft blue as the sun peeks up over the horizon. Clara listens to the cacophony: the rasp of cold engines turning over, the whining of children on their way to school, the grumble of overworked bus and garbage truck drivers, the quiet humming of bakers and barbers and baristas opening their stores.

If Lex follows the plan she laid out with her campaign manager yesterday when Clara was still in earshot, she’ll be headed up the coast - Georgia in the morning, the Carolinas in the afternoon, and two or three TV spots in between. She’ll hit New York tomorrow, then Pennsylvania, then Washington. Rev up in the deep red states, then blitz the states with the latest primaries and the most delegates; not an unprecedented plan, but bold all things considered. The religious right are against her now, and she’ll need to tread lightly at this point to avoid losing the social conservatives. The fiscal conservatives were always in her pocket, but they won’t be enough to turn the tide of public opinion. Politics are a numbers game, Lex should know that better than anyone.

Something in Clara wants to tell her to just walk away, save herself the pain. But telling Lex what to do is usually a great way to guarantee she does the opposite. So once again, Clara resolves herself to just stand aside and watch. It’s all she can do, she tells herself. That she even _wants_ to do anything more than that is crazy.

She threw Lex Luthor into a couch today, pinned her to a wall - the thought of her being President makes Clara’s blood curdle. In the hotel room in Miami, she looked at her and felt that age old surge of fury. She hates so much of who Lex Luthor is - her cruel impulses, her callousness, her selfishness and her insatiable lust for power, for control, for violence. She hates so much of who Lex chooses to be in any given moment. All the enmity between them belongs there. It’s real.

But Clara doesn’t know how to relish seeing Lex in pain like this. She doesn’t know how to enjoy it the way Lois can. The way Bruce does.

Her hand curls into a fist and she finds herself glaring at the ceiling hard enough to burn two small dark holes in it. She growls and rolls onto her side, shutting her eyes. She tries to stop thinking about it, even as her brain runs through it all again on auto-pilot - _not his choice, not his business, needs to back the hell off, she doesn’t tell him how to deal with Joker, he doesn’t tell her how to deal with Lex, wants to punch him in his smug sanctimonious face…_

Her alarm clock goes off at six and she has to stop herself from smacking it so hard it explodes. She takes a deep breath, jaw tight, and sits up to reset it. If she gets up at ten, she’ll have time to shower before work, and she can grab Lois some coffee on her way in.

It’s as she’s settling in, grabbing her pillow to put it over her face, that she notices a ripple of… something. A soft, slow-motion pulse that shivers through the air - through _everything_ , through the bed and her, warping the air ever so slightly like heat. She squints around, trying to identify the cause. But as soon as she notices it, it stops, disappears. She shakes her head a little, tries again, but it’s over. There’s nothing to find.

Maybe she’s just tired, she tells herself. Dizzy. A little delirious.

She flops down and crushes the pillow over her face. Later, she tells herself. She’ll deal with it later.

* * *

 

“Now… Lex. I have to ask the question. Everyone's dying to know the truth - pardon my language. Did you kill your father?”

Lex has, indeed, been waiting for Snapper Carr to ask that question for the better part of ten minutes. She knew he would, and not just because Beverly told him to. In fact, it's been a struggle not to show how bored she’s been waiting for him to get around to it. The live studio audience holds their breath. The cameras pan in, the operators peering through them at her like toddlers at a zoo. The studio lights burn a little brighter, going from glaring to blistering in an instant.

Lex notes all of this while feeling none of it - she’s distracted by the small beads of sweat that are appearing on Carr’s top lip, pushing up through his makeup. Subconsciously, she runs her thumb along the top of her own lip, where she wears a raised line of scar tissue in the shape of Lionel's ring. Then she pulls her elbow off the desk and tucks her hand in her lap - a move that tested well with the audience in the pre-show.

“No.”

“No,” Carr repeats.

“No,” Lex repeats back, to make sure it’s headline news. She tips her head, keeps her expression soft in the way she knows people like. “I’d hope that the fact that the case was dismissed on grounds of insufficient evidence would be enough, but if you need to hear it from me, I’m happy to tell you: I’ve been falsely accused.”

Carr’s riveted to her, eyes burning with all the intensity his little rodent brain can muster. In the audience, there’s scattered applause - palpable relief. Lex is careful not to let the immensity of her satisfaction show on her face. She takes the opportunity to continue, while the Hallmark moment lingers.

“My father had been taking warfarin for years - I’m sorry to say that he was always a little cavalier with his health, as I think many fathers are. He liked to do things himself, and he never cared much for doctors.”

Carr nods like a little bobblehead, eyes waxy and doll-like. “I know a few men his age who can probably relate. It sounds like it was a tragic accident.”

“Absolutely. If he had submitted to routine testing, I feel certain my father would still be with us. This is a terrible tragedy that could’ve been avoided. And in light of that, I find it deeply inappropriate - if not outright cruel - that my opponents have attempted exploit his passing for political gain. It’s sick.”

More applause: longer, louder, and more enthusiastic. She hears at least one measured whoop from the audience. They’re sitting in the palm of her hand now, the air buzzing with the injustice of it all.

Carr is the most riveted of them all, leaning practically out of his seat. “So you’ve been cleared of all charges. What now? This seems like a horrible mistake on the part of Metro PD - are you considering a lawsuit?”

“We’re considering all our options.” They’ve actually already filed the lawsuit - they’ll be going to court in May, no doubt to have it settled by June. But Carr asked if she was considering a lawsuit, not if she’d filed one. “But I’d like to make it clear that I don’t object to the officers of the Metropolis PD doing their jobs. My father was a proud ally to the Metro PD for the better part of his life.” It might be more apt to say he had them firmly in his pocket, and wielded them as his own private goon squad. (Semantics.) “I can only imagine they were trying to do right by him.” The evil old bastard.

Carr sits forward with hands folded on the desk, looking like a squirrel clutching an acorn. “Your father, Lionel Luthor… He was a titan of industry in this country. His death came as a big surprise to the folks closest to him - what has it been like for you, to stand accused of that?”

That she keeps her face free of disgust is a matter of practice. What has it been like? It’s been like it’s been every other time she’s been accused of murder since she turned 19: tedious, stupid, and made under false pretenses as part of an elaborate chess match she has no choice but to participate in. That Bruce Wayne has picked up where Lionel Luthor left off isn’t remotely surprising to her.

But she keeps her expression innocent and even, and tips her head just slightly to bare a little more neck to the camera. America loves a show of submission.

“Snapper…” She pauses, like she’s struggling to put the words together - like she didn’t rehearse them twenty times before this moment. “My father and I… we had a complex relationship. I realize that from the outside, it might seem like that relationship was… volatile. Even hostile, at times. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

“Did you love your father?”

She should be braced for this question. She isn’t. The question itself is so foreign that for a second she can’t process it - she’s not sure, but she’s relatively certain she’s never in her life been asked this question, and for one crucial, ugly second she has absolutely no idea how to answer. That old hatred surges through her, and right behind it comes the panic, the knowledge that she has approximately two seconds to save this lest she risk telling the truth.

She tries - she _tries_ \- to disguise her shock as reasonable. Smiles and shakes her head in a ‘ _how could I not?_ ’ sort of way.

“Of course I did,” she says, every piece of her straining to say something else. Under the desk, her nails dig into her leg through her skirt so hard that it’s a struggle not to scream. “We had immense respect for one another.”

 _I killed him and you should thank me_ , some insane part of her wants to say out loud.

“Beautiful - absolutely amazing, I could kiss you. They love you. The newest polls have got us at twice Reeves’ numbers in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Nevada, and Florida,” Beverly tells her backstage. “Killian has some remarks for you to review before we head out - you alright?”

Lex has a hand pressed to her forehead. “I’m fine.”

“You look terrible.”

“Bev, if you speak to me again without gin in one hand and a Xanax in the other, I swear to God I will turn you inside out.”

Beverly turns her head to yell for someone, but Mercy’s already there, gift from heaven that she is. Lex takes the pills dry and downs them with gin. Beverly, her thunder stolen, settles for shouting at a few interns.

“Let’s go, we’re out in five!”

Lex exhales through her nose, nursing her headache even as the Xanax begins to wrestle her pounding heart into submission. She heads down the stairs to the car, Mercy right beside her. As they step into the open air, Mercy’s glare is enough to hold the swarm of photographers and fans at bay. She sees a few homemade posters - declarations of love and allegiance painted on posterboard, held up as soon as she lays eyes on them. “LEX FOR PRESIDENT,” “WE LOVE YOU LEX,” “HERE TODAY PREZ TOMORROW.” Her adoring public. She manages a smile and lifts a hand before she steps into the car to a chorus of cheers.

Mercy gets into the driver’s seat without asking. Lex takes a seat in to back, shielded from the press by the tinted windows. She presses her hand to her chest, which has started to ache. Her jaw feels stiff, and she realizes she’s been grinding her teeth, pressing them together so tightly that her mouth feels hot.

She hears the question in her ears again and brings her fist down against her thigh so hard that she feels it bruise. She’d bring Lionel back right now just to kill him a second time. This time, she thinks, she’d take it slow. No use being superstitious now that she knows for certain he’s mortal.

Her phone pings and she opens her eyes - she has a message from Peace. She opens it, skims the text, then dives into the data, sitting forward. The Xanax can’t keep her heart rate down - anger flows through her anew, roaring in her ears.

“You’ve got to be joking,” she snarls. She doesn’t understand how this happened - the dermagen is ready to go to market, the FDA signed off on it months ago. But of course, even as notifications of her own interview begin to scroll across the top of her screen, she spots the name on the correspondence: Genevieve Teague.

For a just a second, Lex could swear she feels her father sitting next to her - she feels his shape and his presence, and her skin burns with his closeness as that old hatred sears through her veins. She whips her phone into the footwell with such force that it shatters. She hears the tinkle of glass and presses her hands to her forehead.

 _I killed him and I did you a favor_ , she wants to scream. _I killed him and I’d do it every single day for the rest of time if I could. I killed him and I’m not sorry._

The world seems to warp around her - the air shivers, and her bones twist. Her nails bite into her palm. By the time they arrive at the next venue, she’s bleeding again. She doesn't even feel it.

* * *

 

Clara watches the Snapper Carr interview in a diner in downtown Metropolis - Aazim’s Halal Eatery, one of her favorites. Not her favorite; that would be Wonderful World Grill & Café on Sixth. She’s avoided that one for a while now, seeing that it was her and Lois’ choice venue for lunchdates once upon a time. They might still be friends now that it’s over, but she isn’t looking to drum up any unpleasant memories.

Lois has deliberately chosen the side of the table facing away from the television, but she keeps making snide comments about the interview anyway. Clara doesn’t know how she hears it over the din of patrons chatting over the broadcast. The owner doesn’t have it turned particularly loud, but Lois hears every word anyhow. Clara wonders sometimes if Lois doesn’t have superpowers of her own.

“She literally kills her own father, then goes on tv and whines about how everyone’s being mean to her about it.” Lois takes a savage bite out of her Piri Piri chicken sandwich and talks with her mouth full. “Can you believe this shit? And Carr’s practically eating out of her hand - that guy couldn’t ask a hardball question if he was a pitching machine.”

Clara hums and watches the tv behind the deli counter over her shoulder. Lex has really mastered her ‘penitent victim of circumstances’ expression over the last few years. Even a few of the other patrons seem taken in by it, which annoys her. The people of Metropolis should probably be the _most_ immune to Lex Luthor’s poor-little-rich-girl act by now, but if the cluster of customers leaning over the deli counter watching the interview with wide-eyed wonder and solemn sympathy are any indication, they’re still just as taken in by it as ever.

“You know what’s kind of blowing my mind,” Lois says after a second, sucking sauce off her dark brown fingers. “Why isn’t she saying anything about like… trying to preserve his legacy? You know what I mean?”

Clara frowns and glances over at her as Lois takes a sip of her Coke.

“Like, she could really be playing this like--” Lois fake sniffles, making her chin wobble. “‘Dear old dad! Oh, he’d just want me to carry on, folks. I’m gonna make him proud, and that’s why you should vote for little ol’ me!’”

She wipes her hand haphazardly on her napkin just as her phone buzzes, and before she can grab it, Clara sees the sender. Jealousy ignites in her chest like a molotov cocktail, and she shields her grimace behind her hand. She turns her eyes back to the television, to Lex’s angelic expression, but she’s not really seeing it - she’s listening to Lois’ fingers fly as she texts Bruce back. Lois keeps talking like she doesn’t notice.

“Like, her base would eat that up. She’d pick up a whole heap of people on the pity vote alone. She could really turn this whole thing in her favor, I don’t get why she’s not doing it. She’s not playing this smart.”

Clara’s frown deepens, brow knitting, and she looks down at the floor.

“Yeah,” she says, as the station goes to commercial. “You’re right.”

“I know I’m right,” Lois says, and then changes the subject.

* * *

 

Everything seems to go wrong in slow motion, and Clara watches from the sidelines as it goes. She can't will herself not to; Lex has made her bed, she can sleep in it. But Clara steers clear of her. She stops watching her from afar, stops watching her tv spots or monitoring the PR campaign. She makes a point of only hearing what comes through the wire - nothing else.

The dermagen launch is a snafu and a half - what should have been a revolutionary moment in a lifetime of revolutionary moments is halted by a last minute reversal by the FDA. Then, of course, there’s the news about the lawsuit. Cat Grant of all people sniffs that one out the second they settle: $200mil in damages, all taxpayer money funneled straight into Lex's pocket. It wouldn't be a good look at the best of times - and it’s decidedly not the best of times for Lex Luthor.

Still, she goes into the primary with enough support to contest Reeves. The Republican National Convention is a blitz of deal making, debates, and horse trading. The projected nominee changes by the hour - every news outlet is reporting something different. By the end of the week, Lex has seven states to Reeves’ six, and Hodder is poised to call another vote.

And that, of course, is when the toxicology report leaks: the comically high dose of warfarin, not enough to completely refute Lex’s story of accidental overdose, but more than enough to inject the question of her innocence back into the national dialogue. After that, the sidelines are too sour to abide. The report leaks at 9am, just in time to dominate the morning news cycle. Lois heads for the DA's office. Clara heads straight for Gotham.

She's been good, she tells herself. She's stayed out of it - she’s stayed away from Lex since Miami, even though it's killed her to do it. She's skipped the press conferences. She's pointedly created distance between them. Superwoman and Lex haven't even been seen in the same state since Lex was released, barring that one time in Washington. (A train derailed - what was she supposed to do? Ignore it?) But for all his big talk, Bruce never can leave well enough alone.

Clara crosses the lobby and flashes her big ol’ Kansas farmgirl grin at the receptionist, dimples and all. The receptionist smiles back and buzzes her in no questions asked. She takes the elevator to the fifty-seventh floor - her acrophobia can't muscle it's way past her simmering temper.

Bruce's secretary is applying lipstick as the elevators slide open. She looks up at Clara and jumps.

“Miss Kent! Um,” she says as Clara walks past her desk, “I don’t think he’s expecting you.”

“Oh, he is,” Clara says, and with that she throws open the door to Bruce's office and knocks it closed behind her.

Bruce, to his credit, doesn't even look up. He's leaning back in his desk chair, one leg crossed over the other, fingers gabled - the jacket of his three-piece suit is draped along the back of his chair, shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow as he watches something play in tandem across the screens of his dual monitors. He’s lucky she's here; he's gone Full Bat and it’s not even noon.

“You got some nerve.”

“Good morning to you too,” Bruce grouses, not bothering to look up.

“What happened to ‘stay away from her,’ Bruce?”

“That was my advice for _you_. Not me.”

“Yeah? And what's the point in me following that advice if you're going to turn around and pull this malarkey anyhow?”

Bruce finally tears himself away from the screens to give her an incredulous look. “Malarkey.”

“That's what I said. I gotta call it what it is, Bruce.”

“And what _is_ malarkey, exactly.”

Clara lets her lip hitch, showing her teeth. “You want me to unpack the etymology of the word, Detective, or should I walk us back through it from the beginning?”

The wry edge to Bruce's tone vanishes in an instant. “No,” he says, to both questions.

Clara puts her hands on her hips, several miles out from being mollified. “You are so far over the line right now - you had no right--”

“I had a duty,” Bruce says. “The public has a right to know what she’s capable of.”

“Oh, _please!_ ” Clara says, so loud that it booms off the walls. “Don’t act like this is anything less than sabotage. You don’t want her to be President, that’s all.”

“And you do?”

Clara throws her hands up. “Of course I don’t, Bruce! And she’s not gonna be! But knowing that’s not enough for you - you’ve got to make sure of it.”

Bruce’s brow furrows slowly; he keeps his eyes on her. “You seem very confident of that.”

“Yeah, I am. Unlike you, I don’t need to kick Lex Luthor when she’s down. It’s enough for me to know she’s hurt, I don’t need to ruin her. I don't keep going until she’s good and dead - last I heard that was the big difference between us and them.” And then, before she can stop herself, out comes something she regrets almost before it even dodges and swerves past her teeth: “I mean you, of all people--” Oh, that’s too much and she knows it. She takes a step back, rakes her hand back through her hair.

“Me, of all people.” God, Bruce can never let anything go, dog with a bone that he is. _Don’t say it_ , Clara tells herself, but it’s too late.

“You _knew_ !” Clara shouts. “You knew her back then, and you’re _still_ \--”

 _Stop_ , she tells herself. _Stop it._ She does - stops pacing, holds herself very still. _Breathe_ , she tells herself. _Know your strength. Be careful with him. He’s your best friend, you love him. Don’t say what you were going to say just now._

And a little tiny bit of: _Don’t confuse what you’re mad at him about._

Bruce is watching her, quiet and composed. Her outburst doesn’t seem to have rattled him, but she can hear how his heart is pounding. _Cheating_ , she reminds herself. _That’s cheating._

“Don’t hold me responsible for this,” Bruce says. “I’ve known Lex Luthor was human for a long time.”

 _Even if you haven’t_. It goes unsaid but Clara still hears it loud and clear.

“I knew she was human,” Clara growls, staring holes in the floor.

_But did you treat her like she was?_

“She wouldn’t want your pity, Clara. And she doesn’t deserve your mercy. Nothing’s changed.”

That’s a lie if Clara’s ever heard one. But Bruce knows the value of a well-timed lie. He knows the power of saying something simply because it would be better if it _were_ true.

Before she can argue, he goes on: “I can’t go easy on her for the sake of your guilty conscience. Lex Luthor winning the presidency would be a catastrophe on a global scale.”

Clara turns back to him with an incredulous look. “Do you seriously think this is me being territorial?”

Bruce raises a brow. “Isn’t it?”

“No! For Pete’s sake, Bruce, I’m not _you!_ Although, if I’m being totally honest, I don’t know where you get off - if I came into Gotham and started making ultimatums about how you should handle Joker, you’d stick Kryptonite up my nose!”

Bruce’s frown deepens - it’s his turn to growl. “Joker is a threat I am uniquely qualified to handle.”

“So is Lex! But you just had to go deal with this _your way_!”

“And what is _your way_ , precisely?”

“My way is whatever _works_ ,” Clara says, putting her hands down on Bruce’s desk with enough force to make the joints squeak in protest. “Proportional. Non-lethal.”

“Compassionate?” Bruce asks, and the irony in his tone makes her want to put him through a wall. She grits her teeth behind her lips, nostrils flaring.

“You just told me you aren’t going to go easy on her.”

“I didn’t ask you to go easy on her,” Bruce says. “I never have, and I never will.”

“So what on Earth is your point?”

“My point is: don’t let your newfound empathy for Lex Luthor make you forget who she is and what she's capable of.”

Clara feels her chin pucker slightly - she turns her head, breaking eye contact. He couldn’t have hurt her more if he _had_ shoved Kryptonite up her nose.

‘Newfound empathy’? Is it? She’s never been completely indifferent to Lex’s humanity - she’s always been careful with her, even when Lex makes it hard to be. She’s never hurt Lex when she can avoid it, never once tried to kill her in earnest. Right? But God, that’s a low bar, especially in comparison to the way Clara treats everyone else. That’s a low bar even by villain standards. Sure, she’s ripped Brainiac to pieces. She’d gladly punch Darkseid into the sun. But Brainiac and Darkseid have earned that by the benefit of being on her level - aliens, demigods, as strong and near-invulnerable as she is. Lex is human, and should by that token alone be afforded the better part of Clara’s compassion.

But she isn’t, she never has been - since the moment they first met, Clara has felt an electric surge of animosity towards her that she’s done nothing to temper. Her responses might be proportional and non-lethal, but she’s let Lex set the tone of their interactions since the beginning, never once hesitating to stoop to her level.

She’d never thought twice about that before she saw that damn deposition.

“Tell me you haven’t been watching her,” Bruce says, lowly.

“I haven’t been.” Clara looks back at him as his disbelieving silence lingers. “I _haven’t_.”

“Why did you approach her in Miami?”

“I-- To tell her to drop out of the race.”

“That’s not like you.”

“I was in the area.”

“You were following her. Why.”

“I don’t know!” Clara says, which is the truth. She’s always been drawn to Lex, that’s no secret. Once upon a time, she could justify it with the simple fact that Lex was trouble - where she went, chaos followed. Sticking close was common sense. Now… maybe it’s just habit.

“You were checking up on her.”

“I just wanted to make sure she wasn’t going to do anything reckless.”

“Which you know she tends to do when she’s distressed.”

Clara scoffs and shakes her head. “Obviously. Soon as she’s rattled she gets like fox in a bear trap, you know that.”

“You told Lois not to run the Lionel story.”

“I’m not gonna ask how you know that - but you know that would’ve made it a lot worse.”

“I think you overestimate me, and underestimate yourself,” Bruce says. “At this point you might very well know Lex Luthor better than anyone else.”

Clara takes a step back, heart tripping and flopping in her chest. She feels her face twist with confusion and disbelief. That’s ridiculous - she only knows Lex because she’s easy to know, at least on a surface level. There’s no one on Earth who’s more predictable. Lex is spiraling because she bit off more than she could chew with this whole Lionel thing, and if anyone pushes on it any harder - which now, of course, they’re going to - she’s going to tuck into a tailspin like a sawblade on a dreidel and start taking out whoever’s unlucky enough to get close. Lex is still running for president because Clara told her not to, which guarantees she’s not only going to do it, but that she’s going to do it even harder just to spite her. Lex is as predictable as the sun rising in the east - as certain as the north star.

“How are you so sure she’s going to lose the election?” Bruce asks, his tone infuriatingly calm.

“I just am.”

“I’m not. She got just over twelve million votes in the primary - that’s twelve million new reasons for me to worry. If the GOP hadn’t narrowed their focus to Reeves, she’d have the nomination already.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to _me_ , Clara. Lex’s campaign has focused implicitly on the marketing appeal of someone who has publicly declared _war_ on you - that’s twelve million Americans who don’t mind the idea of your head on pike.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake - I don’t _care!_ So some people don’t like me, big deal. I’m not running a popularity contest, I don’t need them to like me.”

“I _do_ ,” Bruce says, finally putting both feet on the floor.

“She’s not going to win, Bruce!”

“She will if we don’t act.”

“No she won’t! She won’t let herself!” Bruce narrows his eyes, but the words have inertia now and Clara can’t stop them coming. “She’s been sabotaging herself from the start - we don’t have to do a damn thing. Lex Luthor is much better at making herself miserable than you are, Bruce, I promise you that. And she’s not winning this race. She’s made sure of it. But by all means,” she says, throwing her hands up, “keep making it worse since you seem to enjoy it so much.”

She hears Bruce inhale, then exhale. He sits back in his chair - knits his fingers together and squeezes. He looks back at his monitors, but she can tell he isn’t seeing them. Countless gears turn behind his gray eyes, cogs and wheels spinning and cranking as he processes. He drums his thumb against his hand once, twice.

“The report would’ve gotten out one way or the other,” he says.

“Bull,” Clara snaps.

Bruce shakes his head a little. “I can’t pull it back now. It’s in the wild. The damage has been done.”

Clara shakes her head, a bitter twist to her mouth. “Yeah, well, that much is true. So I hope you’re proud of yourself.”

Bruce looks back at her, flexing his fingers in a rare nervous tick. “If you can’t see Lex for the genuine threat she is anymore, we’re going to have problems.”

“I can see just fine, Bruce.” Clara stuffs her hands in her pockets. “And I don’t need a life coach. I need a friend. Give me a call when you’re ready to be one.”

She turns back towards the door - she has her hand on the door handle when Bruce speaks again.

“You couldn’t have saved her, Clara.”

“I could’ve tried,” Clara says, so softly she’s not sure he hears it, and then she pulls the door open, and leaves without looking back.

* * *

 

Lois calls before Clara’s even made it to the curb.

“You and Bruce are fighting?”

Clara rolls her eyes heavenward. “Do you two have a psychic connection or something?”

“The whole polycule’s got a groupchat.”

Clara gags on her surprise and an unwilling surge of jealousy. “What?!”

“I’m kidding,” Lois says, but it’s in the same tone of voice, so Clara’s not convinced that she is. “Listen, I need you to either head back now or head to Ohio. Shit’s about to pop off, and no offense to him or Perry, but I don’t trust Troupe to cover it. I’m not going to be able to get out there in time, I need you in there.”

Clara’s brow creases and she ducks her head, worried someone might overhear. “What’s going on?”

“They just nominated Reeves. I think Lex is gonna stage a coup.”

Clara streaks off in a blur - she’s half way across Pennsylvania before she remembers to hang up.

* * *

 

She’s not supposed to be here, but that’s the least of her worries. No press pass, so she zips in around the metal detectors faster than anyone can see - no point following Bruce’s advice anymore if he’s not going to. She dives into the crowd headfirst, and instantly she’s taken in by the riptide.

Clara has never been to the Republican National Convention, but she’s seen plenty of footage of it. She’s pretty sure it’s not common practice for the crowd to rush the stage.

It’s absolute bedlam. Steve Hodder is onstage with a cabal of be-suited white gentlemen Clara doesn’t recognize, but assumes to be a few of the delegates - he’s standing at the podium shouting into the microphone, but Clara can’t make out more than every third word, even with superhearing. People are screaming, booing, cursing at the top of their voices. It’s only by the benefit of her height that she can see over enough heads to make out what’s happening.

“This committee--” Hodder shouts, but Clara loses the rest of his sentence. Arthur Reeves is standing center stage, shrinking into his suit, a look of horror on his face. The monitors all over the auditorium feature sweeping closeups of the crowd, faces contorted with rage. Clara can feel intent in the air - her skin prickles with it, hair standing on end. She feels like she’s standing on a beach, watching the tide go out… and out… and out… hearing the deafening roar of the oncoming tidal wave in the distance, racing closer and closer. The crowd buffets her, pushing and shouting, waving their fists in the air. They’re seconds away from violence, and Clara has no idea how to stop it.

“This committee’s decision is final!” Hodder screams into the microphone, face bright red. “The delegates have made their decision! Arthur Reeves is--”

A chair sails through the air, crashing into the LCD screen behind the podium. One of the images of the billowing Stars and Stripes splinters, an ominous crack running directly up the center. Hodder, Reeves, and the delegates only have a split second to process their open-mouthed shock before a second chair comes flying at them, and a third. They scatter and the crowd surges forward. Security holds the line, rebuffing them from the stage, but they’re quickly overwhelmed. The crowd surges forward with fists and blunt objects at the ready, hurling everything they can get their hands on.

Clara moves fast - as fast as she can and faster. Like an invisible hand, she shoves Reeves backstage, then Hodder, then the delegates. But she knows better than to pull out the costume here - whatever Bruce might think, she’s not completely stupid. It’s fair to assume Lex’s base wants her dead, and there’s no question whose side the crowd is on.

She has to keep moving to avoid being seen. She dives in for the press next - Ron Troupe first, because she’s technically here on _Planet_ business and so is he. Vicky Vale next, because Clara can be an adult about this even if Bruce can’t. Then Cassie Arnold from _The Boston Globe_ , Nidhi Singh from _NPR_ , Tawny Young from _KLAQ TV_ , and Trish Q from _CNN_ \- she finagles them out from the undertow, getting them to the edges of the crowd in record time and going back for more. She pulls cameramen and talking heads and key grips out of the way of the encroaching hurricane of people because it’s all she can do.

And then, when she can’t risk another second of action without being seen, she snags Troupe’s press badge off his breast pocket while he’s still staring open-mouthed at the crowd. She mutters an apology he can’t hear at this speed and whips backstage, ducking past security before their eyes can register seeing her. She’s already dialing Lois before she finally slows down - the keypad of her phone makes one long sustained beep as she comes back into focus and fails to register a lick of it. Lucky for her, Lois is already calling. Clara tucks into a corner, heart thudding. The auditorium is shaking with the thunder of the crowd.

“What the hell is happening over there?” Lois screams into the phone.

“You were right about the coup,” Clara shouts back. “Here, stay on the phone, I’m putting you in my pocket.”

She hears Lois say something in agreement but her head is pounding with noise - she holds the volume down to mute her in-call volume and tucks it, microphone out, into the front pocket of her denim jacket. Then, she clips Troupe’s press badge to her lapel and slinks further backstage. Behind her, she hears police whistles and megaphones - and another crash as a table comes pinwheeling out of the crowd to obliterate the podium.

The auditorium is organized in the round, and so the backstage is less of a “back” and more of a “down” - she descends the stairs, taking advantage of the confused swarming of staffers and security. The stairs let out in a tiled hallway beneath the arena, and even twenty feet underground, Clara can hear the riot upstairs. The ceiling over her head shakes, trembling as waves of people pound the stage, screaming and raging.

She catches Steve Hodder’s voice from a distance and puts a little jog in her step, dodging people until she’s within view of him. He’s with Reeves, both of them surrounded by huge muscle-clad men in black suits.

“--absolutely losing their minds out there,” Clara hears Hodder say. “If you go back out there, you are taking your life into your hands, my friend - she’s made a complete mockery of this entire institution.”

“Not _me_ ,” Reeves hisses. He’s white as a sheet. “Her! They’re her people, you tell her she has to go out there and fix this!”

They turn down a hallway, security hugging tight around them. Clara spots the door they’re heading towards and hangs back, taking care not to be seen. She probably shouldn’t have bothered - Hodder throws open the door with such force it’s clear he’s got eyes for one person and one person only.

“Luthor!” he roars, and Reeves heads in behind him, their security posting up on either side of the door. Clara parks it against the wall, pulling out her phone and putting one of her headphones in.

“Hodder and Reeves,” she murmurs to Lois, trying to look like she’s talking to herself if anyone catches her. “They want Lex to go out and calm them down.”

“Fat chance,” Lois scoffs, but she’s talking so fast she can barely manage her standard levels of sardonicism. “What are they saying?”

Clara hushes her and turns her free ear towards the door. “I’m gonna find out. Security’s here - if I go dark, don’t call me.”

“Shut it, Kent - I’ve got your back.”

Clara nods, and though Lois can’t hear her, she feels confident that she knows. She presses her back to the wall and strains to hear through the cement and soundproofing, and the holleration of the crowd above them. It’s a strain, so she narrows her eyes and singles out the one sound she knows: Lex’s heartbeat, alive and unyielding as ever. From there, disseminating Hodder’s towering voice from the calamity upstairs is a bit easier, if only just.

“--while you sit in here, sipping chardonnay, it is going to absolute shit out there!”

“It’s a sangiovese, Steve. Please don’t pretend you don’t know that.”

“Do you think I care what the hell kind of _wine_ you’re drinking?!”

“It’s an Italian red - the name means ‘the blood of Jupiter.’ Theorized to have been cultivated by the ancient Romans. I want you to enjoy the poetry of the moment, Steve.”

Clara focuses her x-ray vision, and Lex materializes before her eyes. She’s lounging in the armchair near the mirror, the soft lights of the mirror gilding her dark skin, Mercy poised beside her like Poe’s black cat. Clara couldn’t guess the brands she’s wearing if she tried, but she doesn’t need to know how much it all cost to know Lex looks like a million bucks. She’s wearing blood red head-to-toe: a silky button-down under a small capelet and a pencil skirt that hugs the curves of her hips, her mile-high matching stiletto heels the cherry on top. Just looking at her calves makes Clara feel sweaty and short of breath. Hodder is towering over her, Reeves standing just behind him in the doorway, and still she looks easy as Sunday morning, utterly calm, which is somehow both hot and unnerving.

_Stupid sexy Lex Luthor._

“The poetry of the moment?” Hodder repeats, shaking with fury. “They’re out there accusing us of rigging the nomination. They’re making a mockery of the entire primary.”

“Well, that’s not so much an accusation as a statement of fact, Steve.” Lex’s face remains lax, almost bored. She shrugs a little. “I’m not sure what you want me to do about it.”

“What I want you to do about it? I want you get the hell out there and _fix this._ You engineered this, you’re going to go out there and fix it - no,” he says as Reeves leans in to interrupt, “Arthur, stay of this. She’s the damn architect of all of this, and we all know it.”

“You need to concede,” Reeves says, ignoring Hodder’s motioning him to stay quiet. “You’ve had your fun playing politics. It’s time to step aside and let the grown ups handle things.”

Lex coos a little, narrowing her eyes. “Really? Well, handle them then. I don’t know why you’re still talking to me - big, strapping boys that you are.” Each word drips with disdain.

“Lex,” Hodder snarls. “I’m through messing around - I’m not going to stand here and let you make a mockery of democracy in this country. The GOP doesn’t need scum like you to win our races. You’re lucky we even let you in the door. Now you _get out there_ , and you tell them how it’s going to be from now on.”

Something dances over Lex’s mouth - for a second, Clara thinks she might burst out laughing. Her lips curl, parted slightly in an expression of perverse satisfaction, and she looks at Hodder like he’s the punchline of one of her favorite jokes. But instead of laughing, she tilts her head back and downs her entire glass of wine. Then she shakes herself a little, and sweeps up out of her chair.

“Of course,” she says. “I’d be happy to.”

She comes out the door with Mercy right behind her, still wearing that wicked grin. Clara quickly ducks her head to avoid catching her attention, but if Lex sees her she doesn’t say a thing. Hodder and Reeve practically sprint after her, sharing a victorious look. Clara hangs back, feeling a little seasick. She manages to wind her way back through the hallway, and joins a small group of staffers clustered around one of the monitors like a campfire.

As soon as Lex walks out on stage, arms spread like a conqueror, a deafening cheer goes up among the crowd. The stage is a disaster - the podium smashed, two of the three LCD’s damaged and flickering, making the image of the American flag stutter and strobe in uneven rainbow shards. Clara spots Hodder and Reeves just beyond the curtain, waiting for her to make things right, and she’s able to see the exact moment when they realize their mistake: Lex is mic’d, and they have nothing she wants.

Her voice booms out over the speakers: “My fellow Americans, thank you… Thank you…”

“Holy shit,” Lois whispers in Clara’s ear.

Lex smiles wider. The crowd whoops and hollers. And before she can say anything more, someone in the rafters makes a fatal error, and confetti and red, white, and blue balloons begin to rain in a torrent from the ceiling.

“Friends… delegates… I am _happy_ to humbly accept your nomination - over the self-serving machinations of this committee - for the presidency of the United States of America.”

The bottom of Clara’s stomach drops out. The crowd goes wild. Hodder looks like he might be about to pass out. Arthur Reeves looks ill.

“Perry’s calling a special edition,” Lois says. “Get back here, _now._ ”

Clara goes at top speed, putting as much distance as she can between herself and the state of Ohio as quickly as she possibly can.

* * *

 

“I’m going to kill you,” Lois says as they move side-by-side through the chaos of the bullpen. “I’m going to go back in time, find you as a baby, and launch you back into outer space. I let you make me feel one solitary moment of happiness, like a _chump_ , and this is how you repay me - well, joke’s on you, see if I ever let you pull that gambit again, you two-bit hustler - _move!_ ” She physically grabs a junior writer by the shoulder and pushes them out of her way. “You said she wouldn’t win the nomination!”

“She _didn’t_ ,” Clara argues. “Reeves is still the Republican nominee. She went rogue.”

“Oh, yeah, who could’ve seen _that_ coming!” Lois shoves a few other folks out of Perry’s doorway to shout: “We’re on it!”

“I’m giving you thirty minutes,” Perry shouts back.

“Like I need thirty minutes,” Lois scoffs, whipping out her phone. Then, fingers still flying over her keyboard, she goes back to taking potshots at Clara. “I can’t believe I listened to you - you hexed us. ‘Weh, weh, weh, she’s never going to win!’ Well, here we are Cassandra, don’t _you_ have a face full of egg!”

“I said she wouldn’t win the election - and she won’t. When was the last time a third-party candidate won the presidency?”

“Zachary Taylor, 1848,” Lois says without hesitation. “Before the Whigs folded. Obviously that was before Kansas was a state, so Lex couldn’t run…”

“Yeah I think there was also the small problem of her being considered three-fifths of a person at that point.”

“Shut up,” Lois says as she reworks a sentence at light speed. “She wants to run for president, she’s gonna have to go through me and the Emoluments Clause. Don’t have any problems with that one, right Miss Cleo?”

Clara winces, feeling guilty and tired. She purses her lips, but Lois isn’t backing down, looking at her with an intensity that dares her to argue.

“Go for it,” she says.

Lois rolls her eyes in a way that tells Clara she absolutely does not need or want her blessing and goes back to typing. Every little clack of her phone feels like a finger jabbing Clara in the chest. _This isn’t supposed to be happening. You said this wouldn’t happen. This is your fault._

And maybe it is. Clara’s been lost in a whirlwind of second guesses since she left the convention. Maybe she was wrong - maybe she’s been wrong all along. Maybe Lex isn’t spinning out. Maybe she’s coiling up like the snake she is, getting ready to sink her fangs in and pump this whole country full of poison.

Clara hears the rumble of an explosion sound across the city before Lois gets the emergency ping.

“Livewire,” she says.

“Oh thank God,” Clara says under her breath.

“Maybe if you’re lucky _she’ll_ run for president.”

Clara tears out of the newsroom like it’s got a physical hold on her, and rockets off towards a problem that can be solved with punching.

* * *

 

“It’s really very simple,” the financial advisor says, trying to keep pace with Lex as she strides through the new Luthor/Ross campaign headquarters in Metropolis. “In order to resolve any potential conflicts of interest and meet the requirements set forth by the Constitution, all you’ll need to do is liquidate your assets and consolidate them in a blind trust.”

“I’m the CEO of one of the single largest international corporations on Earth,” Lex says, not even bothering to look directly at him. “There’s nothing simple about it.”

The financial advisor looks a little nervous - he’s here at the board’s personal request, which is the only reason Lex is hearing him out. “Of course,” he says, “I apologize, my phrasing was poor - I just mean that our firm will make the transition as seamless and stress-free as possible.”

Lex’s eyes narrow, and she’s glad she isn’t looking at him - her contempt for this entire charade is so potent that a blind man could see it.

The board contacted her less than an hour after the convention. The call came as a bit of a surprise - her own mistake for not realizing they might collectively be able to summon the one spine she was sure they didn’t have between them. Mercy has apparently been fielding their calls - the unexpected boon of having smashed her phone after the Snapper Carr interview. But Cynthia Ng succeeded in getting through to her as she was on the plane back to Metropolis, and after an ample period of pussyfooting and genuflecting and false congratulations, she finally got to the point.

“Now that your presidential bid has taken a more serious turn,” Cynthia had said, without the appropriate amount of fear in her voice, “we need to begin to speak more seriously about a transition of leadership.”

A transition of leadership - it never ceases to surprise Lex how many ways there are in the business sector to avoid saying what you mean. A million ways of prettying up the words, ‘I’m about to take you for everything you’re worth.’

Lex tells the financial advisor exactly what she told Cynthia Ng.

“I’m not interested in a transition.” Business-speak for ‘go to hell.’

“I understand,” the financial advisor says, which couldn’t possibly be further from the truth. “This company is your father’s legacy, I can only imagine--”

“No,” Lex snaps, hatred roaring in her ears like a gale force wind, and this time she turns the full force of her gaze on him, knowing the power it holds. “You can’t imagine.” She needs him cowering, and she knows exactly how to make him do it - all deadly heat and stiletto-enhanced height. She’s not a small woman - a solid six feet without any help, a well-muscled physique she still refuses to retire. Once upon a time, that bothered her: the idea that she’d never be properly demure or feminine, most especially in her father’s eyes. Now, she knows how to use it. Sure enough he flinches back from her, fear written like an apology on his face.

“This company _isn’t_ my father’s legacy - it’s mine. My father’s company went under years ago. I built LexCorp from the ground up _alone_ , not as a co-entity but as a competitor. It is _my_ company. It has always been my company. And it will absolutely never belong to anyone else.”

“Of course,” the advisor says, and this time there’s a simpering weakness to his voice that Lex relishes in. “I do understand how you feel - but I’m sure you understand that there are… legal issues, if the company were to remain under your executive control. Constitutional issues. Our firm is prepared to help you make the necessary transition, if you succeed in your presidential bid - we could even look at rendering the transition as temporary as possible, make room on the board for you to return in a consulting role…”

“Apparently I’m not making myself clear.” Lex stops mid-stride and spins around, making the financial advisor skid to a stop to avoid running into her. “I will happily burn this company to the ground before I hand it over to you or anyone else.”

The advisor gapes, jaw flapping. “Ms. Luthor… I… what you’re talking about isn’t legal. You cannot be both the President of the United States _and_ the CEO of LexCorp.”

Theoretically speaking, Lex knows this to be true. If it weren’t unconstitutional, the demands of either job are so great as to make it completely impractical to do both at once, even for her. She’d always intended to turn LexCorp over to Mercy while she was busy - someone who could watch over the company while she was away, who could also be expected to pass along any pertinent info and return it all when Lex had finished out her second term. Eight years away was always going to be a bit of a stretch, she’d known that when she started. But she’d been fully prepared to do it, assuming she could select her successor from the shortlist she’d been preparing for the past several years.

But now that someone’s here telling her she _has_ to do it, Lex feels unbearably itchy in her own skin, tense and outraged. It’s the presumption that annoys her - she hasn’t worked her whole life to become one of the most powerful people on the planet to be ordered around by the damn _board_. It seems they need a reminder of who’s in charge. No matter; Lex is happy to provide.

“Watch me,” she says, and then, like clockwork, there’s an explosion so close to the building that it rattles the foundation and blows out half the windows. Lex ducks away from the shower of glass. The financial advisor shrieks, flinging himself to the floor.

When Lex stands, Mercy has appeared at her side as instantly as an apparition. She stands rigidly, head turned towards the source of the chaos, lithe body somehow bigger when she has her hackles up - Lex sighs and dusts powdered glass and drywall from her suit.

“Well, that’s my evening.” To Mercy, she says, “Get rid of him.”

But before Mercy can move, a bolt of electricity arcs out of one of the outlets, bounds up the wall, through the ceiling lights, and comes careening straight towards her. Lex whistles, and from the side of the room, Honor unholsters her gun and tosses it. Lex catches mid-air, clicks the safety off, aims, and fires, moving backwards down the row of desks - once, twice, thrice, four times, five times, the arc of electricity dodging every one, getting closer and closer until it pounces on her like a jaguar. They go bowling over, head over feet, and Lex finds herself pinned to the carpet between Livewire's rubber-clad thighs, a sharp fingered hand around her throat.

Livewire grins down at her, all black lipstick and aborted charm. “Hey there, Ms. Luthor. Got time for an interview?”

“I'm afraid my dance card is full.”

Mercy fires and Livewire barely manages to jump back into her electric form in time - the bullet zips through the air where she used to be and Lex scrambles out of the way as a woman-sized bolt of lightning jumps up into the ceiling lights, circling for another opening.

Vultures, the whole lot of them. Lex runs for the fire door without a backwards glance, slamming it behind her.

* * *

 

Clara heads for midtown and arrives ahead of the emergency responders. Livewire's been spotted headed into the old Anthony Ivo Memorial building on Hobbes and 17th, and as soon as Clara lands, she sees why: Lex for President signs in the shattered windows. Must be their new campaign headquarters. She grits her teeth, trying to ignore how much she doesn't want to tangle with Lex twice in one day. Maybe she should've stayed behind with Lois.

She lands streetside just as the fire door slams open and Lex comes tumbling out, ducking to the ground just as Livewire - Leslie Willis - comes bounding after her, missing her by inches and bouncing off the pavement and into a lamppost. Her electric presence billows up the metal, and then she appears at the top, hands pressed to the back of the bulb as she begins firing bolts of electricity from it like a ray gun. Lex manages to scramble out of the way of the first, and kicks a trash can lid directly into the path of the next, deflecting it right back into the lamp. It bursts in a shower of sparks as Livewire jumps nimbly to the next, shouting down to her.

“There are just a few energy initiatives I want you to consider! You're campaigning for my vote too, y'know!”

She fires again, and this time there’s nowhere for Lex to go. Clara's body moves forward with a burst of speed before she can stop it, pulling her out of the way. They go tumbling across the pavement towards the blackened ruins of the trashcan lid - Clara nabs it, grabbing where the metal is still molten hot, and whirls it towards Livewire, who shrieks and dives out of the way as it razes the light she was standing on in half. Clara whips forward to catch the falling pieces, laying them down gently in the street, then back out of the way of another blast. She keeps Lex at her back, her body between them.

“Ugh,” Livewire gripes, standing astride the balustrade of a nearby building. “Superwoman? Don't you know where you're unwelcome?”

“Busybody,” Lex growls from behind her.

Clara whips her head around, glaring. “Are you serious? I just saved your life!”

This time, the crack of electricity starts behind her, not in front of her - before she can react, she feels Lex's ring jab her in the back. Just like in Miami, she goes flying, ripped through the air, skin on fire. She pinwheels through the air straight into a parked car on the side of the road in a crunch of glass and metal. The car alarm blares in her ears like a flock of cartoon birds circling her head.

“I don't remember asking for your help,” Lex sneers at her.

Livewire's drooling from her perch. “Ooh, Madam President! We love a go-getter!”

Clara gets to her feet just as the cavalry arrives - Mercy Graves, two other Virtues in tow, knocks through the fire door with her gun at the ready. One of the other women runs for the car - Mercy lays down cover fire to keep Livewire from getting to it, and the remaining bodyguard pulls Lex to her feet, hustling her into the backseat. The car takes off and Livewire leaps after it, and Clara's left with a bug in her teeth and her pride bruised.

It takes about an hour to corner Livewire and incapacitate her. Lex has retreated to LexCorp Tower West by that point and barricaded the door. Clara turns Livewire over to Metro PD and heads home, burning all the way with a feeling of betrayal.

As she’s ripping off her cape in the dark of her apartment, she finally lets her bitterness overtake her. She was wrong. She sees that now. Trying to help Lex is the single stupidest thing she’s ever done - she’s reading too far into her shitty childhood and devil-may-care misbehavior. Lex is just fine, she thinks, throwing the suit back into its secret compartment. Doesn't need her help, and shouldn't get it. Clara told her if she stayed in the race, she'd make sure she lost. It's time to make good on that promise.

She heads in early the next morning and bangs out an article on Lex's criminal affiliations - all of them, even ones she doesn’t have non-Superwoman-obtained evidence for, even ones she merely suspects rather than knowing for certain. It’s speculative, borderline reckless, but not remotely unfair as far as she’s concerned. Lex is a criminal, and criminals feel comfortable approaching her - nothing untrue about that. She hands it off to Lois for an editing pass when she gets in at 8:15. She reads it with a frown, nursing her coffee. Clara stands with her back against the desk, arms folded tightly over her chest.

“You sure you're good publishing this?” Lois asks.

“Yeah.”

Lois gives her a sideways look Clara can't read. But she nods and shrugs. “Alright. I guess I accept your apology. Let's rip her a new one.”

Clara sucks her cheek between her teeth, nodding a little. She deliberately pushes back against the desk, right up against the raw pink spot Lex left on her skin. It's what she deserves, she reminds herself. She asked for this.

* * *

 

Over the next month and a half, Clara intercepts supervillain attacks on Lex no less than seven times - Livewire, Parasite, Amazo, Metallo… even Ra's al Ghul and Two Face get in on the action, which is especially ironic considering Clara and Bruce are still just barely on speaking terms. The animosity between them is gone now that Clara’s stopped trying to help Lex or defend her, but it's still awkward between them. He doesn't seem to know what to do with how personally she's taking all this, which is fine by her. Feelings aren't Bruce's strong suit. She's always known that. They see each other at the weekly League meetings and whenever he makes it into Metropolis, which lately isn’t much.

As for the attacks, Clara gets in and out with as little face-to-face interaction with Lex as possible. It's trickier to avoid her security systems than it is to avoid her - the campaign keeps her plenty busy, constantly on the move. The closest calls are when the attacks happen outside of Metropolis, where Lex's dominion is less absolute. Toyman descends on her just as she’s leaving a fundraising gala in Texas and Clara's forced to swoop in, in full view of the cameras, to stop the giant wind-up monkey’s cymbals from crashing together with Lex between them. The reporters don’t miss a beat, instantly swarming her with questions and making her job about five times harder. Lex doesn’t say a thing - just gives her a poisonous look.

A week later, while Clara’s otherwise engaged helping hurricane victims in Louisiana, Lex premieres the new version of her warsuit - sleek, stylish, and several times more dangerous than the last model. It’s frontpage news all over the country: Lex posed like the Pallas Athene astride the Ultra-Humanite, breastplate emblazoned with the LexCorp logo.

“In today’s world of extraordinary threats,” Lex says in the next debate, “I believe that any commander-in-chief must be fully equipped to act in defense of themselves and the nation... without relying on wayward do-gooders in tights.”

The title of the adjoining article reads, in crisp black block letters, “‘I’M NO DAMSEL.’”

Clara watches the debate in silence, and crumples the newspaper in her fist.

* * *

 

Lois brings her coffee from the break room and peers over her shoulder.

“Y’know, your shorthand gets absolutely deranged when you’re pissed off.”

Clara’s fingers stall on the keyboard, and she glances over her shoulder. Lois has changed into a t-shirt and pulled her hair up, a sure sign that she’s planning to be here late. “You saw that tip about the LexCorp board of directors?”

“Yeah,” Clara says.

“Sounds like they’re pushing Luthor to give up the company.”

“Could’ve seen that coming.” Clara turns back to the computer; her cursor blinks at her expectantly, but she’s lost her train of thought.

“Hey,” Lois says, reaching out and nudging Clara’s chair with her foot. “Turn around. Look at me.”

Clara exhales slowly and does as she asks. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows of the _Planet_ building it’s slowly turning to twilight, the slow-burning cigarette of August wafting into September before their eyes. In two months, Clara thinks with a rock in her stomach, it’ll be November. They’re running out of time, and Lex is still polling too well for her comfort.

But Lois is giving her a look like she’s not really thinking about any of that. She has her arms folded, and she’s watching Clara like Clara needs to be watched. Like Lois thinks she needs something she’s not asking for.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“I’m fine,” Clara says.

“Yeah, you don’t seem fine. Like, listen, don’t get me wrong - I love when you go full Elizabeth Wilkinson like this. I’m glad you’re back on the side of logic and reason and 110% down to rip Lex Luthor’s ears off. But - Smallville.” Lois sighs, tipping her head to one side, apparently deciding whether or not to say what she’s about to. “...I count on you, y’know? To keep me honest.”

Clara feels an odd sinking sensation in her chest. She swallows.

“Yeah. I know.”

“I know we agree more often than not, but when we’re both pointed in the same direction going ninety miles an hour and I don’t feel you applying any brake, I get worried.”

Clara purses her lips, drums her thumb against the arm of her chair. “...yeah.”

“You get there’s a difference between taking Lex to school and… savagery. Right?”

Her face must say more than enough - Lois puts her hands up in surrender. “Just checking.”

But Clara keeps thinking about it. It sits like a second rock in her gut, adding to the pile. Her cursor keeps winking at her - she stumbles through her thoughts, gets lost, doubles back. Deletes a few paragraphs. Bites her lip. Lets her coffee go cold.

“I’m going home,” she tells Lois.

Lois nods, not looking up from her laptop, but as Clara passes, she grabs her hand out of the air and gives it a kiss.

“Go get some sleep, Smallville,” she says.

Clara walks back to her apartment with her head low, and her heart lower. Sorting through her thoughts is impossible - they’re all tangled and knotted, muddy and blurred through the lens of her own feelings. She doesn’t bother with dinner - lets her clothes hit the floor and lies down on her bed, looking up at the ceiling with no idea what she’s supposed to do. She feels as low as she ever has.

She can’t win where Lex is involved, she thinks. She just can’t win.

The pulse is so strong this time that it wakes her up - just as she slips into a doze, she feels something push through her like a wave, making the whole world ripple and vibrate. She sits up, but it’s like moving through molasses. It makes her nauseous. For just a second it feels like her bones are warping, melting, every cell of her slip-sliding into each other like layers of hot wax.

Then, as soon as it started, it’s over. Her alarm clock blinks blearily in the dark. Outside her window, taxi cabs honk and car tires hum along the road - pedestrians laugh and shout and carouse. The world carries on as if nothing happened.

Clara grabs her Justice League comm off the mount on the kitchen window, and calls the one person she always calls when she feels like no one in the world will understand.

“Please tell me you felt that.”

“I’ll do you one better,” Bruce says. “I recorded it. Meet me at the Cave.”

* * *

 

“I wasn’t sure after the last time,” Bruce says, fingers clacking against the keys of the Batcomputer. “But this time, I was able to record it - we’re experiencing some kind of temporal shift. Like a seismic ripple moving through spacetime.”

Clara peers up at the screen, where the computer is re-running a simulation of the temporal wave, moving in a steady ripple across a map of the East Coast. It looks like someone dropped a rock into a pond, emanating from somewhere to the west.

“Can we zoom out?” she asks.

Bruce nods, already way ahead of her. With a tap, the map zooms out once, then twice, until it encompasses the midwest as well as the Eastern seaboard. Clara leans forward, peering closer.

“You’re kidding.”

“This is what the computer picked up.”

“That puts the epicenter in Metropolis,” Clara says, looking at him.

Bruce nods. “I wasn’t able to pinpoint where. But if these measurements can be trusted, Metropolis is the epicenter of whatever we’ve been experiencing.”

“What does that mean?”

“If we were looking at seismic activity, we’d consider these foreshocks - predictors of some type of significant temporal event.”

“When?” Clara asks.

“It’s impossible to say. Space-time isn’t linear - from our perspective, this could be an event happening in the distant future, or the distant past.”

“If it were happening in the past, wouldn’t we know about it?”

“Not necessarily. Our ability to perceive any significant change to our own timeline is extremely limited - the nature of the flow of time would dictate that we would always remember everything as being the way it was supposed to be.”

“Maybe.” Clara puts her hands on her hips. “Still. If we assume we’re feeling them now at random, it doesn’t give us much to work with. It may not be any more likely that it’s happening in the future, but if it is, at least we can do something about it.” She folds her arms, thinking. “Plus, there’s the fact that the waves are getting stronger over time, not weaker. Seems like we’re moving closer to the origin of the waves, not further away.”

Bruce nods, slowly - to this day, it always surprises her what a good listener he is. One of the most brilliant minds on Earth, and he still lets her fumble her way through her so-called ‘good ideas’ without ever patronizing her.

“I agree,” he says. “Something’s coming - I don’t have the data to tell us when.”

“But it starts in Metropolis.” She sighs, arms tightening. “Just like all our biggest problems right now.”

Bruce watches her. This is the most time they’ve spent together one-on-one in months, and she finds she’s missed him, even if she hasn’t missed the way he always makes her feel like _he’s_ the one with x-ray vision.

“You look tired.”

“Thanks, Bruce.”

“I don’t mean it as an insult.” He sits back in his chair, like he knows he’s one to talk. “You’re running yourself ragged.”

Clara sighs, letting her head hang to one side in surrender. “I’m fine. Seriously.”

“I know I pushed you too hard about Luthor,” he says, and like all of his apologies it comes with no preamble, no embellishment. “I made you feel like you couldn’t trust me to help you with this.”

“It’s not your fault.” Clara puts up her hand to keep him from interrupting. “Not… entirely. ...I don’t trust anybody with her, Bruce. I don’t trust _myself_ with her.”

“I can see that.” Bruce folds his hands slowly, surveying her with his same fixed intensity, as though the real mystery to unravel isn’t the temporal event, or even how Lex keeps polling so well in spite of the slew of articles on her misdeeds, but Clara. Clara, on her part, sighs and allows the psychoanalysis to get under way.

“Lois got on me for being too harsh today.”

“Lois did?”

“Yeah.”

“Lois _Lane_?”

“Yeah,” Clara chuckles. “I mean, she’s right. I got… y’know. Mad. Scared, really. Got in too deep and got my feelings hurt - not like that,” she says, interrupting another of Bruce’s looks. “Look, you were right. I read that… deposition, Cohen’s case files, the whole nine, and I felt bad for her. I kept thinking I was seeing things I wasn’t - cries for help, almost.”

“Maybe you were.”

“Don’t start that.” Clara leans into one of her hips, scraping her toe against the stone floor of the cave. “Lex Luthor doesn’t want help from me or anyone else.”

“Not wanting help isn’t the same as not needing it.”

“Bruce…” God, he’s always so confusing. “Listen. You’re the one who told me if I couldn’t see her as a genuine threat, it was going to be a problem.”

“Did you ever stop seeing her as a genuine threat?”

“...no.”

Bruce tips his head like that’s that. Clara watches him, sighs again; thinks of Bruce’s rogues, and how many times she’s seen him guide them time and time again towards the light, only to be rebuked at the last moment.

“How do you help people who don’t want your help, Bruce?”

“We do it all the time.”

“What about people who…” She shifts a little, turning the words over in her mouth before she says them. “What about the ones who aren’t gonna change?”

“Anyone can change.”

“Yeah, but what about the ones who won’t?”

“I’ve always been surprised by the number of people who will change, given the right circumstances.”

“What are the right circumstances?”

“For Luthor? We haven’t found them yet. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”

Clara sucks her cheek between her teeth and chews slowly, like a cow at its cud.

“You mentioned, a while ago - that I knew her back then.” Bruce folds his arms, looks away from her. “We were friends, once. Long ago and far away. I realized the truth about Lionel too late. And once I did, I did nothing to stop it.”

In his voice, Clara hears what he won’t admit: the unspoken guilt he has - that he’s always had, she realizes - when it comes to Lex. The feeling that he ought to have known how Lionel was treating her. What Lex was being made to endure as his heir. Clara feels a tug at her heart, affection sprawling in her chest. It feels like an apology; for the thing with Lex _and_ the thing with Lois, the thing they never talk about.

“You were a kid, Bruce,” she says, gently. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Bruce sits with that for a moment before he speaks again.

“It isn’t _your_ fault now, Clara.”

* * *

 

Lex is coming off the debate stage in Nevada when her cellphone rings. She walks backstage, far enough that the cheers of the crowd are slightly less deafening, and puts the phone to her ear.

“What.”

“Lex - it’s Cynthia. We’ve been trying to reach you for over an hour.”

“I presume you still own a television, Cynthia, so I won’t bother explaining why I couldn’t take your call.” If she’s honest, she wouldn’t have taken a call from the board an hour ago even if she _hadn’t_ been involved in the final debate of the season. They have nothing to talk about - one of oh-so-many reasons their insistence on building a summer home up her ass is proving very annoying. “How can I help you.”

“Lex, we’re beginning to get very concerned. The national election is less than a month away. We need a contingency plan for succession.”

“ _‘We’_ need nothing of the kind.”

“And beside that - the premiere of the new suit without prior authorization from the board was unwise. LexCorp is not some sort of satellite for your personal whims - it does not exist to outfit you with any shiny new toy your heart desires.”

“Actually, it does,” Lex snaps. “My name’s on the damn thing, you’d think it wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out it was my company to do with as I please. But here we are. Perhaps John Hopkins ought to confiscate that Master’s of yours.”

“Our investors--”

“Are absolutely none of my concern.”

“Lex, you represent the face of this company. As CEO and the Chairwoman of this board, you serve to guide the brand and act as its ambassador, and your reckless behavior sees effects in the tens of millions. Surely you can understand the need to reassure our investors that the company will continue to have a clear vision and strong executive guidance as you transition into a different role.”

“It will,” Lex says. Then she hangs up, and doesn’t pay the board a second thought.

* * *

 

Election Night finds Clara in the bullpen in the center of the chaos, feeling like she’s on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange. She’s got one phone pressed to her shoulder, another pressed to her ear, her eyes darting between the three televisions posted up near Perry’s office all playing different channels. Lois has been refreshing the election map every eleven seconds for the last hour. Snapper Carr is in Centennial Park, head framed by the two gleaming white fangs of the LexCorp Towers, the lights of which are shimmering red, white, and blue.

Clara puts a hand over the receiver of the phone at her ear. “They’re calling Mississippi for Reeves!” A second behind her, the same announcement goes out on CNN, NBC, and FOX, and a shout goes up all through the room - neither cheering nor booing, just loud, energized reaction.

But Lois is already shaking her head, gnawing on the nail of her thumb as she refreshes the map for the umpeenth time. “He’s out. He’s out, I’m calling it.”

“Well, we knew she wasn’t going to win any fans in the Deep South,” Clara says, hanging up one receiver and pulling the other off her shoulder. “Hey Tawny - yeah, I’m still here. Yeah, they just called it.”

“He doesn’t have the numbers,” Lois says.

Clara pulls off the phone. “Florida’s reporting at 74%, they’re calling it for Lex.”

“Hirono’s got New York,” Lois says. “You know she’ll win California, Lex doesn’t have a chance in hell. She split the vote - Jesus Christ, Clara you were right. You were absolutely right, she can’t win this. She’s gonna make a go of it, for sure, but…”

Clara turns and finds Lois pulling her hands through her hair.

“It’s too soon to call,” Clara says, but something about Lois’ voice makes her absolutely sure she’s right.

Cat pops up from her desk, waving frantically to get their attention. “They just called Virginia for Hirono!”

Clara’s about to say something else, but then another phone starts ringing, and she forgets whatever it might have been.

* * *

 

Three hours later, as they’re calling California, Lex wonders, idly, how much cocaine it would take to kill her.

She used to know off the top of her head - back when it was relevant, she supposes. She’s heard they’re lacing it with Fentanyl now; she quit cold before she’d gotten her tongue in the mouth of that particular beast. The high is supposed to be legendary. How many grams would it take to kill her, assuming perfect purity, and assuming she were having vigorous sex at the time? It’s been approximately fourteen months since the last time she had sex of any kind, very less vigorous - it’s been almost fifteen years since the last time she had cocaine or knew approximately how much it would take to kill her.

She’s sitting in front of the television in her apartment with more people around her than she can stand. There was something different about having them around her on the campaign trail - cheering as she came off a stage, calling on her behalf to get out the vote, assembling around her in a motorcade. It’s different having them talking and milling around her apartment. It makes it seem like they’re the sort of people Lex would consider friends instead of hired help. Their chatter is a drill against Lex’s skull. Their casual acquaintance to her is like bugs burrowing under her skin.

NBS has Kanon Hirono, the Democratic candidate, at 255 electoral votes to Lex’s 174. Reeves conceded hours ago - the networks are all running clips of his concession speech.

Beverly comes over with a business-like moue. “Killian is working on the final draft for your concession speech. I can get Hirono on the line whenever you're ready.”

It’s a testament to how piss drunk Lex is that she doesn't shoot her straight out.

“I'm not conceding,” she says through her teeth.

“I… oh.” Beverly, to her credit, chooses to beat a strategic retreat.

The only person who belongs here is Mercy, who stands stalwart at Lex's elbow, glaring at anyone who comes close. The volume for the TV is on, but Lex can't hear a damn thing any of them are saying. Her head is so deep in her hand that she’s forced to view all the infographics through the blinds of her fingers.

It's been months since she's been home any longer than a few hours - Mercy’s been here to retrieve her clothes and the occasional document, but Lex can't remember the last time she slept here. It isn't the campaign that's the reason, either; it's her father. Ever since that sham of a trial, she can feel him in every steel beam of these buildings she built in defiance of him, and if that isn't irony she doesn't know what is. She never let him see her here, the jewel in the crown of her beautiful twin spires - she never let him higher than the seventeenth floor boardroom. This penthouse apartment and its twin in LexCorp Tower East were a safe haven, sanctuaries Lionel Luthor would never lay eyes on. Even so, she can feel him in the air she breathes. She can feel him in her blood.

 _You can't escape me, Alexandra._ She can practically feel his hands on her, bruising her skin - her gorge rises. Hates when he touches her, the gentlest of them gluttonous precursors to violence, like she's a coveted object, or a favored racing hound. She hears the insidious whispers of what he thinks of doing to her but never does, and somehow the constant waiting for it is worse. _You can run to the ends of the Earth if you'd like. But I made you what you are. And I'll always be there inside you, no matter how far you run, no matter how hard you fight. You'll always belong to me, Alexandra, even when I'm gone…_

“ **_Get out!_ ** ” she bellows, and even if the words are meant for him, it's a credit to her reputation that the whole herd of staffers springs up and scatters, sprinting for the elevator and the stairs. She breathes his poison for another minute or two, listening to them scrabble and shriek like mice, too afraid to defy her. That's life as it should be, she thinks. They _should_ fear her, all of them. He made her, alright - he made her and then she destroyed him, and she won't stop until she's thoroughly destroyed everything that remains.

The room is bearable once it's steeped in silence. Mercy, the only person left in the room, reaches down for the remote to silence the television, but Lex stays her with a wave of her hand.

“Leave it,” she tells her, watching the shifting scene. On screen, a small assembly of familiar faces is braving the night air of November in Metropolis to address the gathered crowd. Cynthia Ng heads the group of board members, bundled up in a charcoal gray coat and periwinkle scarf.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she says from the podium where Lex should be making her victory speech. “Thank you for your patience. Gathered here with me are the members of the LexCorp Board of Directors - the unsung heroes of this humble organization. As we await confirmation of the results of this election, we have decided to announce our decision for this company moving forward… and a long awaited transition of leadership.”

The crowd erupts in confusion and eager questions. Lex feels her heart thud dully against her ribs.

“While we appreciate the vision of Ms. Luthor in bringing LexCorp to this point, it is our belief - in accordance, it seems, with the voters of this great nation - that she is not qualified to lead us towards a better tomorrow. It is for this reason, along with several others, that we have decided to elect a new Chief Executive Officer…”

The rest of her words are lost to the ringing in Lex's ears.

_Over my dead body._

The world seems to warp around her, billowing and twisting - Lionel's blood writhes in her veins. Her bones go convex, then concave. She has the distinct sensation of leaving her body, even as she gets to her feet. Of stepping _through_ something as thick as a sheet of glass, and simultaneously as thin as gossamer.

She twists her ring to its third setting, and her warsuit weaves over her clothes like water, closing over her in a second skin. The armor moves like a piece of her, nanotech allowing her instantaneous myoelectric control that comes as easy as breathing.

She hears Mercy say her name as she rips open the door to the balcony, but she couldn't care less what she or anyone else has to say. She'll die before she lets them take anything more from her. She'll kill each and every one of them if that's what it takes.

* * *

 

Halfway across the city, Clara and Lois are watching the impromptu press conference with the board when the ripple hits - Clara feels it in her gut and in her bones, and it almost bowls her over. A second later as it passes, she finds herself feeling dizzy and ill, like she's just stumbled off a tilt-a-whirl. There's a few murmurs in the crowd, but no one else seems nearly as affected by it as she is. From her bag, she hears her JL comm badge chirp. Bruce most have felt it, too.

“You have to go,” Lois says, staring at the television.

“What?” Clara asks, turning back - and that's when everything goes to hell.

On screen, the camera pans up - the crowd screams. A spotlight tracks Lex as she steps off the edge of her balcony. She falls a short ways, then ignites - she comes streaking across LexCorp Plaza like a Kryptonite comet, headed straight for the representatives of the board. The explosion that follows as she touches down rattles the whole city. It makes the window panes of the _Planet_ building shiver.

Lois whips around just as Clara's about to leave, grabbing her hand.

“Be careful,” she says, and once again there's something about her voice that almost feels like a premonition. Lois never looks this scared as Clara heads off to battle, and Clara trusts that her reasoning is sound. She doesn't really have time for sound reasoning right now. Nevertheless, she ducks forward and plants a kiss on Lois’ forehead.

Then, in a streak of red and blue, she’s gone.

* * *

 

When Lionel died, Lex had made the mistake of thinking their long chess game was over. She's gotten sloppy, she realizes that now - their long torturous game never ended. She killed the body, but the immortal spirit lives on all around her, inside her and without her. It lives on in Steve Hodder and Genevieve Teague, in Catherine Ng and Snapper Carr - in all the vile insects of the world, in all the vultures.

She lands on the stage feet first, not bothering to slow down, and calamity billows out from her in a wave, rippling through the city. Reporters shriek, board members cower, and the city is hers - she owns this town, rules it, and she’s not about to give it up. The stage holds; it's the barricades that splinter and go flying, heat and green light flowing from the rocket boosters on her feet. The asphalt cracks beneath her, and her suit captures that kinetic energy, lighting up in brilliant emeralds and purples and gleaming golds. The carbon fiber blades on the back of her legs take the impact with ease, and she lets the feeling of power under her hands and at her fingertips overtake her. She jumps nimbly up to the stage, where the board members are cowering, each trying to shrink behind all the others.

“Cynthia,” Lex purrs, all venom. “You know, I'm having the strangest evening - I could have sworn I just saw footage of you and your menagerie of _idiots_ making an announcement of some kind.”

Cynthia gapes and stutters, scrambling backwards. “L… Lex… Lex, my god--”

“You weren't _really_ planning to try and steal my company from me on the same night Arthur Reeves stole my _election_ , were you?” Green electricity arcs from the gauntlets on her arms as she flexes her fingers. “Have a little _heart_ , Cynthia.”

“Lex,” Cynthia stutters out. “We gave you a chance - this… this is exactly what we were talking about, this sort of--”

“Careful,” Lex says. “Last words should be good ones.”

“Lex, for God's sake! Don't be reckless! What do you think this will accomplish?”

“Your reputation will never survive this,” hisses a board member. “Everyone will know you're a lunatic.”

“Kill us here,” hisses another, “and it will cost you everything. It will be the end of your career.”

A bitter wind pushes at the back of Lex's neck. The spotlights behind her have cast her shadow over the members of the board, painting the darkness that enshrouds them pitch black. She glances over her shoulder and finds the crowd still close at hand - some twelve hundred people, assembled in the cold, all with cameras out, rubbernecking with all their might.

That old hatred flares in her blood. Power burns at her fingertips.

Lex hums like she's thinking. Then she says,

“I can live with that.”

And fires.

* * *

 

The snow starts to fall just as Clara’s clearing Centennial Park. LexCorp Plaza gleams in the distance, an amphitheater of white, gold, and silver standing between LexCorp Tower East and LexCorp Tower West. Bruce’s voice sounds tinny in her ear.

“That was the strongest one yet.”

“Yeah,” Clara says, distracted. “I know, I felt it.”

“Whatever the origin of the event is - it’s close. You need to be careful.”

“Yeah,” Clara says.

“Clara - don’t engage. I’m calling in the League, we’ll--”

“Gotta go,” Clara says, and then she grabs her comm from her ear and flings it away, rocketing forward just as the green fireworks of Lex’s energy bolts light up the night sky, catching in the fluffy snowflakes drifting on the wind.

Clara’s on her before she can fire her next shot. Too slow, and Clara’s so angry at herself. Too slow. Cynthia Ng screams as the burnt corpse of one of Lex’s boardmembers goes tumbling across the stage, and Clara could’ve stopped it if she’d just moved a little faster, which she could have. But something had stayed her hand, caught her in midair, frozen her like the snowflakes in her eyelashes. She throws Lex back a few feet, and instantly she knows what it was: it was Lex, the very sight of her lit up in green, twisted with rage, looking like a living avatar of the goddess Kali, beautiful and molten with vengeance.

Lex skids, but stays upright, her movement liquid, serpentine. The warsuit looks deadlier up close, all clean lines and power. But it’s the look in her eyes that makes Clara remember that note of fear in Lois’ voice. She remembers Miami, following Lex after her release from jail to make sure she wasn’t going to do anything crazy.

Maybe she should’ve followed her for a little while longer.

(And maybe, just maybe, she should’ve listened to Bruce.)

Lex whips her hand to the side - the panel erected behind the stage explodes in a bolt of green energy, sending a plume of smoke and debris flying. Clara jerks her arm to cover her face. Behind her, the boardmembers run for cover. Out of the smoke comes another flash of deadly verdant green - Clara jerks to the side and tackles a boardmember out of the way. The blast misses them by inches, and instead collides with one of the marble pillars surrounding the plaza. The crowd yells, ducking out of the way, taking a few steps back from the platform, but only a few run for cover.

Sirens blare as Metro PD skids onto the scene. Clara shoves the boardmember in her arms towards safety, through the smoke that’s billowing to a fire. She spots Lex through the rising flames - floating above the smoke, ascendent, her palms alight with spits of green energy, Kryptonite radiation converted into pure weaponized force. Clara zips out of the way of the first blast, ducks under the second. Then she leaps into the air and crashes into Lex headfirst, wrapping around her body like an octopus as they go careening to the ground.

People dive out of the way as they come crashing down - Clara drives Lex into the pavement, holding her by the arms, bits of marble flying in their wake. For a second, she’s still, and Clara gets a good look around. Reporters and people in t-shirts with Lex’s name emblazoned on the front are standing around with cameras at the ready, gawking, like they’re putting on a show. For just a second, Clara feels violated - exposed, shocked by them - and then, a second later, Lex’s hand grabs her by the throat and slams her backwards into the ground. Clara’s hears Lex’s glove sing with the promise of death and socks her in the jaw.

Lex goes flying. Clara leaps up and follows her into the air, grabbing her before she can recover, tossing her. But Lex fires her rocket boosters and comes to a stop, mid-air - she spins back and fires one blast, then two. Clara dodges the first, but has to block the second. The pain is instant and immense: her suit ignites at her wrist, and the burn aches down to her bones. Lex flies at her and they collide at full speed. They hurtle through the air together until Clara’s back hits glass, and Lex drives her through it.

They go through the window of the eighth floor of LexCorp Tower West. Glass shatters around them and Lex drives her, hard, into the floor. Tiles fly - they smash through desks and furniture. Concrete buffets the back of Clara’s head. She gets her bearing just long enough to hook her toe beneath Lex’s ribs and _throw_ \- Lex goes flying, crashing into the LexCorp logo mounted on the wall, shouting through the shower of sparks and plexiglass.

Clara gets to her feet, but Lex pegs her with another blast - this time to the chest, and it feels like a supernova’s exploded just to the south of her lungs. She crashes through the glass walls of an office, totalling an expensive looking computer, decapitating a desk chair. She grabs for the first solid object she can find - a silver paperweight proclaiming whoever owns this office the most valuable employee in their department - and hurls it like a discus, pegging Lex in the shoulder so hard it takes off her shoulder plate. Lex yells in pain, then retaliates: Clara takes another blast to the chest, this one powerful enough to drive her through the wall and into the adjoining conference room.

They fight - Clara hurling chairs and Lex blasting them out of the air. A news chopper beats the air outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, a spotlight on them as they throw office furniture at one another. The glare of the lights is blinding. Clara sees it catch Lex in the eyes, sees a firestorm of incandescent rage flare through her, sees the glow of power in her hands.

She doesn’t know who she’s kidding, but by now, Clara’s body acts on its own. Her instincts pitch her forward with a yell.

“ _Lex!_ ”

But Lex can’t hear her - is deaf to her, blind to her. Green energy flares in her hand as she fires a blast at the news chopper; it bursts through the glass, catching the side of the cabin in an explosion. The resulting concussive wave blows out the windows, knocking them both off their feet.

By the time Clara recovers, the chopper is spinning in the air like a dandelion seed, the cockpit engulfed in flame. She leaps into the air, hurtling towards the danger, catching the chopper by the nose, slowing it before it can fall to the ground. She lowers it slowly, and she can’t believe the crowd is still gathered, taking video, taking pictures. What the hell is wrong with these people? She struggles to hold the copter, fire singing her hair. The heat is so intense it makes her eyes water.

“Jump down!” she yells. The pilot obeys her instantly, leaping down to the ground and scrambling away. But the cameraman and reporter stay perched in the cockpit, still rolling.

“Jump _down!_ ” she shouts, unable to keep the anger from seeping into her voice. But they ignore her.

“This is gold,” the reporter mumbles. “Absolute gold.”

A powerful wave of disgust moves through her. She feels her cheeks get hot and her hands go tight. Then, movement catches her eye - she looks up, and spots Lex, standing at the edge of the shattered windows, energy billowing from her hands, as green and deadly as Kryptonite herself.

“Lex!” she shouts, but even as she does she knows it’s too late, and a tiny awful part of her, the fracture filled with a molten vein of revulsion, doesn’t want to fight her anymore. Lex fires another blast, and the force of it knocks the chopper out of Clara’s hands. She yells, tries to hold on, but it crashes sideways into the pillars that frame the plaza, and ignites. She’s barely fast enough to get the reporter and cameraman out before it goes up in a hailstorm of metal. The wreckage belches a column of chemical black smoke up into the air.

Lex comes through the smoke to get at her, but Clara’s ready, her hands free - she catches her fists in both hands and they go up and over, wrestling, the crowd barely giving them enough clearance to fight. Clara’s torn between paying attention to Lex - close, teeth sharp, absolutely deadly in her desperation - and the unblinking eyes of camera phones and film crews.

Lex launches herself at Clara, readying another blast. Clara grabs her wrist and forces it away - Lex blackens the stone around them in an arc, and people jump away, shouting and jeering like it’s a cage fight.

“Get _back!_ ” Clara shouts, but they don’t, and it’s with a dawning horror that she realizes: this is what they came here to see. Metro PD pushes through the crowd, trying to help, but even Lex’s blasts can’t frighten the spectators off. They came for blood - not Clara’s. _Hers._ This is what they’ve been waiting all night for. _Absolute gold._

Lex pits her head against Clara’s, and Clara can feel her bones flexing with rage, her body trembling with exertion. She forces Clara back, hands aglow, and before she can get off another shot, Clara fires off with her heat vision, hitting her in the chest, where she knows the armor is the strongest. Lex goes flying, and Clara goes after her as the cameras flash. Lex crashes and skids across the stage, and Clara dives on top of her, straddling her to pin her legs, catching her hands again, holding her there. Disgust and pity pour into her in equal measure.

“Lex,” she hisses, “what the hell are you doing?”

But if Lex hears her, she doesn’t show it. Clara is so used to seeing an endless series of gears behind Lex’s eyes, a labyrinth of machinery all moving in perfect synchronization. But right now, she can’t see her at all. There’s no machinery, no labyrinth, no secret master plan - just wild animal desperation. A fox in a bear trap, ready to tear into itself with its teeth just to get free.

Lex shouts - a sharp, wordless thing - and blasts Clara off her. She goes tumbling through the cold night air, snow catching in her curls and along the back of her neck. LexCorp Plaza is a ring of fire: the panel on the stage billows, the fallen helicopter belching smoke, the lights of the police cars flashing like flames. And Lex, at the center of it all, is burning too - as bright as a star before it collapses.

That’s when it happens - with Lex standing center stage, surrounded on all sides by destruction, Clara hovering above her. The world flexes - bending in first, then out - twanging like a rubber band, stretching and shifting, alighting in a dizzying kaleidoscope of color. The air shudders. The earth shakes. Clara feels like someone’s reached inside her and pulled her insides out. Her brain puddles like wax in her throat. Her bones go rubbery and weak. She feels dizzy. Sick. Suckerpunched, drunk. The world tunnels and spins, goes dark, then blindingly bright. It zigs and zags, tilts and whirls.

And then, in the space between her and Lex, she sees it: a tiny pinprick of brilliant golden light. It hums, then it builds, growing slowly at first, then faster and faster, until it’s a giant disc between them. Inside, she can see strange flashes of movement. As she strains to look closer, she could swear she sees herself reflected in it, like a clouded mirror.

She has no idea what it is or what it means. But some thirty feet below her, she sees Lex - sees her looking at the same disc, eyes wide and full of that same desperation.

Bruce would tell her not to. It’s Lex’s hand that raises, Briar Rose to the spindle - it’s Lex who made her bed, and Lex doesn’t want her help.

But everyone else here came to watch Lex destroy herself. And Clara’s not sure why, but she can’t abide that.

Lex touches the disc, and it ripples, flexes, expands, swallowing her whole - Clara dives in after her.

The world blooms white, and the ringing in her ears deafens her. The ripple becomes a wave becomes a tide. It pushes through her, pushes her all the way out of herself, and through it all she holds on to Lex so tightly that it’s all she can feel.

_I’m going to try. I have to try._

The Plaza vanishes in a blinding pulse of light, and so do they. White is the last thing Clara knows before she loses consciousness.

* * *

 

White is the bedroom she wakes up in.

She blinks, slowly. The bedroom is immaculate - the bed that surrounds her, incredibly soft. She sighs, weary, and pushes her head into the pillow. Was it all a dream? That’s a little anticlimactic. She doesn’t know this room, but it feels vaguely familiar, and it smells of rose potpourri. She feels safe here, though she’s not sure why.

She sits up, taking a deep breath that turns into a yawn. A soft spring breeze catches in the curtains over the open doors of the balcony, bringing a few wayward flower petals with it, and a sprinkling of warm sunshine. Clara sighs, eyes closed, resting her arms on her knees.

Then, she feels the weight of someone else in the bed beside her, and turns her head.

Lex is lying beside her, still fast asleep.

Clara stares for just a moment, stock still, before scrambling out of bed on hands and knees like a crab. She plasters herself against the wall, eyes bugged out of her skull.

The knock on the door startles her more than it should.

“Madam President? President Luthor, this is your wake up call.”

Oh, she just had to try. She just _had_ to try.


	2. Punchline

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After waking up in bed together, Lex and Clara try to get the lay of the land. Step 1: figure out how they got here. Step 2-1000: somehow convince everyone that they're in love and definitely not trying to kill each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Omg y'all are DELIGHTFUL. Thank you so much for your responses so far to this fic, they're giving me life. I was supposed to wait a little longer to post this but... ;p meh! I like y'all too much. 
> 
> As promised, tws for this chapter: child abuse (that'll be a pretty consistent one now), misgendering/transphobia, and canon-typical violence. I'm working on illustrations for this chapter and others, but in the meantime, if you need visuals for Clara and Lex, my facecasts for them are Julianna Peña and Dominique Jackson. Also: there will be a lot of West Wing in this fic. You can't stop me. I'm drunk with power.

Lex meets her father for the first time when she’s five years old. She’s sitting in the kitchen with Lena - when he knocks on the door, she doesn’t look up. Lex doesn’t receive houseguests, Pamela does, and usually it results in her being waved out of the room for one reason or another. She isn’t interested in being waved out of the room at this particular moment. Lena’s brought home a special gift that she’s currently obsessing over - a copy of the _Metropolis Inquisitor_ that claims aliens walk among them.

This is a ritual between them. Lex is given to falling down the rabbit hole of obsession every time something in particular catches her eye. For the last year or so, her focus has remained squarely on the existence of extraterrestrial life in the universe, and she’s voraciously consumed everything she can get her hands on, which, as a five-year-old, isn’t much: the odd magazine kidnapped from the convenience store checkout, the odd book on tape from the dilapidated West End Library. A few months ago, she’d pulled Lena’s Intro to Astrophysics textbook out of her bag and begun sounding out the words herself, and now she does this almost daily, as soon as Lena gets home. Pamela has never insisted on Lex delousing her imagination, but Lena is a bit more practical - she tends to insist that Lex cite any extraordinary claims she makes with extraordinary evidence, something Lex once found frustrating but now finds exhilarating. She’s been gleefully debunking the _Metropolis Inquisitor_ for about a half an hour now, going line by line.

Lena usually watches her work, helps her sound out new words. (The latest one: ‘commemorative.’) But when she hears a man’s voice from the entryway, she turns in her chair, a strange look on her face. Lex tries once, twice to get her attention. When calling her name doesn’t work, she resorts to banging on the table.

“Lena. Lenaaaaaaaa.”

“Shh,” says Lena, and the ferocity of it is unnerving. She doesn’t turn back to look at her. Lex frowns, and keeps beating on the table, unable to understand why she’s no longer the center of attention.

“Lena, help me!”

“Lex,” Lena hisses, and this time she _does_ turn around. “Be quiet.” The look on her face is fierce and frightening. “Sit down.” She jabs her finger at where Lex has gotten up on her chair, one leg tucked under her butt, chest leaned way out over the table, the way she’s not supposed to.

Lex sits down obediently, but her feelings are hurt. She’d argue, but there are footsteps in the hallway, and a figure looming in the archway to the kitchen.

Lionel Luthor is a handsome man, not that she realizes it at the time. He’s nice to look at. Dark-skinned like her, well-dressed with a good haircut: medium-length curls and a temple fade that transitions into a well-kept beard. He smells good - woody and warm from his Clive Christian cologne, minty from his aftershave. His eyes are gray like Lena’s, and they have keenness to them, like he really enjoys whatever it is he’s looking at. The frown lines that frame his mouth are shallow enough to give the impression that he’s a bit younger than he is, though the soft streaks of gray at his temples suggests the truth of the matter. He’s neither exceptionally tall nor exceptionally short, neither exceptionally fat nor exceptionally thin, but he projects a large presence, seeming to take up far more space in the room than he does. Behind him, Pamela seems to shrink away until she’s as thin as the wallpaper.

Lex takes him in the way she takes in all strangers: briefly, critically, and dismissively. Once she’s through, seeing no reason why he ought to be here or why she ought to care, she turns back to her work with the _Inquisitor_ , resolved not to pay him any mind.

“Lena,” he says.

“Lionel,” Lena says back. Lena always calls adults by their first names.

“This is the boy, then.” Lionel paces across the kitchen, hands in the pockets of his suit. As he rounds the kitchen table, it dawns on Lex that he must be talking about her. Hurt and disgust flare through her. She burrows into the magazine with renewed determination.

“Lex,” Pamela tells him, as though he needs help to remember her name.

Lionel hums thoughtfully. “Is that what you’ve been calling him?”

“It’s what she prefers,” Pamela says, and a dash of relief runs through Lex like cold water. She pulls her shoulders up to her ears, not liking Lionel’s closeness. She feels uneasy with him near - he seems so big to her, so strange, and she doesn’t like him.

“Short for Alexander.” Lionel tuts his tongue, resting his hip against the table with his back to Lena. “We’d discussed it; Lillian always preferred it to Junior. She always was so headstrong…” He chuckles. Lex braves a quick glance to Pamela to see if this is some Adult In-Joke she isn’t getting or if it’s as unfunny as it seems. Pamela isn’t laughing, or even smiling. Lex turns back to her magazine, but it’s impossible to read with him sitting so close to her.

Lionel gestures to the magazines and books strewn before her. “Already reading?”

“Yes,” Pamela says. “She’s… Lex is very intelligent. Started talking in full sentences when she was two. Very fast learner, very curious. She only started reading a few months ago, but now…” She trails off, and for just a moment Lex sees her smile fondly, like she loves Lex so much she can’t help it. “Her kindergarten teacher thinks she might be a genius. You wouldn’t believe the kind of letters I’m getting.”

He leans his head closer to Lex’s, reading over her shoulder. Lex shrinks away from him, contorting a little to avoid touching him, unwilling to put down her magazine.

“Is he deaf?”

“She,” Lena says, never breaking eye contact with him.

Lionel pauses, peering at Lena like she’s grown a second head.

“Excuse me?”

“It’s _she_ ,” Lena says, more firmly this time. “Lex is a girl.”

“Lena…” Pamela looks like she wants to stop her saying it, but doesn’t know how.

A strange smile scrawls itself over Lionel’s mouth. He cocks his head like he thinks they’re making fun of him.

“Are you joking?”

Now it’s Pamela’s turn to cast that nervous look at him. She opens her mouth, then purses her lips. “Lex has… I thought it only right to respect what she’s expressed…”

Lionel laughs, and it’s a cold, cruel sound. He claps his hands together and the sound makes Lena and Pamela jump.

“My God,” he says, shaking his head. “What kind of perverse nonsense is that?”

Lex isn’t expecting it when he grabs her chin. He pinches it too hard between his forefinger and his thumb and forces her head around to look at him. She pulls her shoulders up to her ears and her knees up to her chest, but he won’t let her squirm away - when she tries to twist out of his grip, he only holds her tighter, and it hurts. When he speaks, it’s oddly calm.

“Are you a girl or a boy, son?”

“Don’t touch,” Lex says, her voice tight in her chest.

“Answer me.” Lionel tightens his grip. “I don’t need anyone filling your head with garbage.”

“Don’t _touch!_ ” Lex says louder, since he appears not to have heard her, and anger sweeps in to protect her - she whips out with her hand, banging his arm, clawing his wrist.

The strike comes like clap of thunder, a fork of lightning to her cheek. Her head flies into the wall, thinly cushioned by the wispy spindles of her hair. Pamela gasps and claps her hands over her mouth - Lena’s chair scrapes across the floor. Lex has never felt so much pain in her entire life: an explosion of heat in her cheek, her mouth, her temple.

Lionel grabs Lena by the arm before she can get close enough to help, and squeezes so tight that she whimpers through her teeth.

“Stop confusing him,” he says. “You hear me?”

To this day, Lex is embarrassed of the way she dissolved into tears, the way she went on wailing and clutching her cheek long after Lionel walked out and slammed the door behind him. Lena only stood back for a second before rushing in, gathering her against her chest, holding her so tight that Lex might as well have lived in her arms. Pamela stood with her hands over her mouth, and didn’t come near Lex until much later, when she’d cried herself to sleep and needed to be tucked in.

She should’ve known he would be back after that. Should’ve known that Pamela would let him take her. “It’s better this way,” Pamela had whispered. “He can give you the life you deserve. This is what your mother would’ve wanted.”

Even at five years old, Lex knows this isn’t true.

Only Lena sees all this for what it is - only Lena runs after Lionel’s car for blocks and blocks, yelling Lex’s name. Lex presses her hands to the window and screams Lena’s name too, sobbing and shaking until Lionel yanks her back around in her seat and covers her mouth until she feels dizzy, until she can’t cry anymore because she can’t get enough breath to do it.

In her heart, she never stops reaching back for Lena. But she cries silently for the rest of the car ride, and after that she doesn’t cry much at all. When they arrive at Lionel’s massive estate, he shaves her long wispy hair off her head with his own clippers. It never grows back.

* * *

 

A warm spring breeze feathers over Lex’s scalp, and she comes awake all at once. She lies still, eyes open, heart beating just slightly too fast as she takes stock of her body - head bare, nightgown flowing over her in a silk sheath. No pain that she can detect, no bruises, no cuts. She could’ve sworn…

This isn’t her bed.

She sits up. She takes it in, eyes darting over the white bedsheets embossed in gold, the soft sunlight falling into the room through the ornate gold tapestries framing the balcony windows. The same light catches in the crystal fingers of the chandelier that hangs in the center of the room. She turns her head to find an enormous wooden headboard directly behind her, and inadvertently locks eyes with Mary Lincoln.

She’s in the Lincoln Bedroom. Why the hell is she in the Lincoln Bedroom?

The sheets beside her are still warm - the sun? No, too warm for that, a bed partner, newly rousted - but before she can figure out why, another knock sounds from the door. She whips her head around to face it for the first time, and finds none other than Clara Kent plastered to the wall, eyes bugged out of her skull.

A voice calls through the door: “Madam President? Are you awake?”

Oh, this is rich.

Lex Luthor sits very still, and runs through the possibilities. By her own recollection - which is, as always, excruciatingly perfect and captured in exacting, unflinching detail - she was just fighting Superwoman to the death surrounded by the smoking wreckage of her life’s work. Now, the only thing she smells is rose potpourri. She can conclude from Clara’s expression that this isn’t _her_ doing. And, given that she’s neither in a hospital, nor prison, she can probably rule out the Justice League as being behind this particular party trick. Pity. Their schemes are usually fairly easy to resolve.

She goes through the list. Which of the world’s spineless has she pissed off recently? Apart from all of them. No, no, this is someone with either an obsession or a sick sense of humor. Joker? No. Too boring for his tastes - if Clara slaps on a blonde wig and starts singing ‘Happy Birthday, Madam President,’ she’ll reconsider. Nygma’s a possibility - it’s suitably elaborate. But for one thing, she and Nygma are on fairly neutral terms for the time being, and for another, ‘are you awake’ hardly passes for a decent riddle. This looks too authentic for Toy Man. Ra’s al Ghul wouldn’t bother with the ruse; Lex doesn’t know a single mobster with this level of creativity, and her C-list enemies are out of the running on grounds of originality alone.

Mxyzptlk? Possible, but she doesn’t feel the telltale tendrils of magic probing her mind. She shelves this theory for later, but allows herself to mostly rule out kidnapping.

With that in mind, she takes her chances, and answers as calmly as possible.

“I'm up.”

“They're expecting you in the West Wing in thirty minutes, ma'am.”

“Of course they are,” Lex mutters under her breath. To the voice behind the door, she says: “Fine. Let them know I’m on my way.”

“Take your time, ma'am.”

 _Oh, I will_ , Lex thinks, and whips the bedclothes off her legs.

“What do you think you're doing?!” Clara hisses at her, still pressed flat to the wall.

What Lex is doing is figuring out where the hell they are and what the hell they’re doing here, but she supposes expecting any thought much more advanced than ‘murder bad’ is too much for Clara Kent. She shakes her head, instantly annoyed that the universe couldn’t be bothered to give her more intellectually appropriate company.

She scans the room for inconsistencies - it certainly seems to match every picture she’s seen of the Lincoln Bedroom, though that’s no mark in its favor. Any amateur can make a set. It’s personal touches she’s looking for. She yanks open the drawer of the nightstand - the smell of antique wood greets her. The drawer itself is meticulously organized, if crowded: several small notebooks and a dayplanner, all filled with handwriting she doesn’t recognize, but a few symbols that she does (Kryptonian in origin); a rich, hydrating night cream that looks suspiciously like her own favorite brand; and a pill box with an electronic lock that opens instantly at her touch. A soft white glow highlights the pills within - her own configuration of Vitamins C, B12, and D, and her morning dose of Estradiol.

Not an amateur, then. Someone who can stage the intimate details of her life with ease.

There are two - bracelets? Smartwatches? - docked in a charger on top of the nightstand, one white, one blue. The blue looks far too much like Clara’s Kryptonian goonsuit for her taste. She snatches up the white one. Like the pill box, it unlocks at her touch, but appears inactive. She frowns at it, but keeps it in her hand.

She moves across the room to the bathroom, Clara still crowing behind her. “Lex, what are you doing?” Lex ignores her, and instead takes it in: a hairbrush on the marble countertop with several thick strands of black hair between the bristles; a pair of toothbrushes in the antique china cup by the sink; her own reflection looking back at her from the silverplated mirror. She examines her face and her body, but she can’t find a single point of pain. It unnerves her. Nothing from the battle remains - none of the wounds she was expecting, not even bruises. And--

She freezes. She leans closer to the mirror, pressing her fingers to her mouth through a film of disbelief - she reaches for her scar but finds nothing. She drags her fingers slowly over the place where it should be, but the skin there is smooth, as dark brown and even as the rest. There's a tiny dip that  _could_ be her scar, but it's invisible to the naked eye. She steps back, but she can't help searching her body for other things that ought to be there: the soft dappling of burn scars on the back of her neck (gone), the dark brown scars along her back (gone), the tiny scars from her surgery (still there, thank God). She forces herself calm again -  _focus._

The disc is certainly the problem, she thinks - the white disc of light that appeared before them in LexCorp Plaza. It hadn’t seemed magical, but it had been entrancing. She’d felt it vibrating the air between them, and outside its reach, she’d felt time distort until the rest of the world was standing still. If she hadn’t imagined all that, and it hadn’t been some sort of dream, it seems obvious that it’s the cause of all this. What was it? A portal? Some kind of temporal distortion? The way it had appeared before them at such a crucial moment, seeming to stretch between her and Clara directly, she feels certain that it was artificially created to bring them here. But where ‘here’ is - and for what purpose - she can’t possibly imagine.

“Lex, would you _say something_? For Pete’s sake, you’re freaking me out.”

It’s just then that Lex happens to look down at the empty space on her left ring finger.

“You’re under the impression we’re on speaking terms,” Lex says. She feels Clara freeze behind her. “I promise you: you're wrong.”

Clara takes a step back, but not quickly enough. Lex grabs the toothbrush cup with her free hand and whips it at her head, dread and fury slithering through her chest. The cup shatters in a spray of antique porcelain and Lex is past her in a blind second, dashing back across the room. A real test for their keeper’s attention to detail: she reaches underneath the nightstand for the gun she’s kept at her bedside for the last ten years.

Nothing. Of course not.

“Oh, for the love of--”

Lex yanks the lamp off the table and rounds on Clara, who’s wearing a face full of exasperation and porcelain dust. “Are you kidding?” she asks.

“You think this is funny?” Lex asks.

“You trying to kill me with a lamp? I mean, yeah. A little.”

She gets too close and Lex rips the shade off the lamp and jabs her in the eye with the bronze finial. Clara hisses and shields her face, swinging her arm in a blind arc - she knocks the lamp out of Lex’s hands and barely catches it by the cord before it goes careening to the floor.

“Would you knock it off?! Someone’s going to hear you!”

That much is a given. Hell, whoever’s got them is almost certainly watching, no doubt having themselves a good laugh at their expense. Lex snarls and leaps over the bed, sliding over it like the hood of a car. There has to be a usable weapon in this room, though all of it’s bunk without--

“If you’re looking for your ring, it’s not here,” Clara says, and oh, of _course_ she’d realize what Lex was looking for.

“I don’t need a ring to hurt you,” Lex snaps, furious that she’s figured her out.

“Yeah, by all means keep trying the priceless antiques. One of those is bound to work at some point.”

Lex grabs a vase off a side table and chucks it at her. Chrysanthemums go flying, water spraying the carpet. Clara bends out of the way of the projectile, then dives to catch it.

“What is your plan here?” she hisses.

Lex doesn’t really have one at the moment, but she'll be damned if she’s about to let Clara Kent - whose most advanced plan generally amounts to ‘punch opponent real hard until they fall down’ - point it out.

“If I scream, what would you wager the likelihood is that Secret Service runs in and shoots you: high, or extremely high?”

The color runs out of Clara's brown cheeks.

“Lex,” she says, very slowly, holding both hands up. “I don't want to fight with you right now. Can you please just… tell me what's going on.”

Lex raises an eyebrow. “What makes you think I know?”

“Oh, call it a hunch.”

A bold assumption - but not, Lex supposes, unfounded. She has a few ideas at least, almost all of them unsavory:

  * She is inside of some kind of advanced virtual or practically-generated simulation (‘Truman Show Theory’);
  * She is being held here against her will as some sort of bizarre social experiment (‘Test Subject Theory’);
  * This is all some strange, feverish nightmare that she is experiencing as a result of interacting with the disc, and she will soon be awakened to cheers and fresh bottles of champagne (‘It Was All A Dream Theory’ - ludicrously hopeful, but not completely out of the question);
  * She has already died and this is her personal hell (‘Divine Retribution Theory’ - this time a bit pessimistic for her standards, and a little presumptive given the lack of tangible negative things that have actually happened thus far aside from the obvious, but given her last run in with Satan, again, not completely out of the question);
  * The disc was a temporal-spatial anomaly, and has transported her either to an alternate time, or to an alternate universe in which she has displaced her alternate counterpart, who is - apparently - the President of the United States (‘Multiverse Theory’).



It is this final theory that seems to hold the most promise, for the following reasons (in order):

  * Re: Truman Show Theory: On a purely technical level, a television show of such a magnitude as to convincingly mimic real life would be prohibitively difficult and expensive to pull off, and the whole charade would be rendered entirely moot by any actor therein not knowing their lines. Enter Clara, who is clearly as disoriented as she is, and who - it’s worth pointing out - would have ways of knowing instantly if they were being filmed in front of a live studio audience;
  * Re: Test Subject Theory: Having spent the better part of two decades in the public eye, Lex knows (and in fact, relies upon) the profound difficulty involved in removing her from it for any prolonged period of time without being detected. Something of this magnitude would be impossible to pull off. Also, she struggles to conceptualize the point of such an experiment, which further discredits it. She may currently be a victim of happenstance, but she is at all times first and foremost a scientist. There are few experiments she cannot conceptualize the point of;
  * Re: It Was All a Dream Theory: Lex has been a lucid dreamer for quite some time now, and she doesn’t seem to be able to render Clara in any form other than the one in which she currently appears, very less in anything approximating feathery showgirl regalia, meaning that this theory is almost certainly void;
  * Re: Divine Retribution Theory: Satan promised her quite a bit more Lionel-themed torture in Hell, and Lex, quite frankly, is given to believe him to be a man(? Deity?) who keeps his most unpleasant promises.



By process of elimination - and through a cursory examination of the facts, as she perceives them - that leaves the Multiverse Theory.

“Let’s assume I have a working theory.”

“I _do_ assume that.”

“Why should I tell you?”

Clara makes a move to throw her hands up, but she’s still holding the vase and the lamp, and can’t. “Why wouldn’t you?”

“Several possibilities involve you either being a hallucination or a tool of whatever entity has sent you to manipulate me.”

Clara throws her head back, shaking the vase and the lamp like she’d like to club Lex over the head with them. “God, you are just… the _worst_ , you are the _absolute worst!_ ” She turns to her, steaming with aggravation. “Is that even your working theory?”

“No,” Lex admits. “But subscribing to untested preconceptions isn’t good science - I need to see how the situation evolves before I can draw any conclusions.”

“Lex--” Clara stops, snarls with frustration and puts the vase and the lamp down. “Would you just-- What do you have to lose? By telling me?”

“Other than a distinct strategic advantage?”

“Yes.”

“If I don’t tell you, I don’t have to bother breaking it down into words small enough for you to understand.”

Clara puts her hands on her hips, mouth hanging slightly open. For a second it seems like she might be about to yell, but she manages (just barely it would seem) to keep her composure. “Is it aliens?”

Lex narrows her eyes. “What? No.”

“How do you know?”

“I’m Earth’s preeminent xenologist. I would know.”

“Are we in a dream?”

“Obviously not.”

“Obviously,” Clara scoffs, shrugging a little. “Are we hallucinating?”

“It’s possible.”

“Is it likely?”

“No.”

“Are we in a computer simulation?”

“That’s another possibility.”

“What about time travel? No,” Clara says to herself. “No, no way, that doesn’t line up. This future isn’t really in the cards for you.”

A burst of fury colors Lex’s cheeks, but before she can say anything, Clara interrupts her: “Are we in an alternate universe?”

Lex looks her up and down, debating. Finally she says, “That’s the prevailing theory.”

Clara’s brow knits. “Are you joking?”

“Yes,” Lex sneers, mouth full of sarcasm and disdain. “I’m joking. Do you think my comedic timing needs work?”

They regard each other silently for a second, as though from opposite sides of a boxing ring. Finally, Clara folds her arms and raises an eyebrow.

“Well, alright then. See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Lex snarls, annoyed. The - smartwatch? She has no idea - in Lex’s hand chirps. She glances down at it. 7:15. She’s wasted fifteen minutes of the thirty she’s allotted. She grits her teeth and turns back to the unexamined corners of the room.

“So,” Clara says from behind her. “What do we do now?”

Lex stops dead in her tracks and cocks her head like a gun over her shoulder.

“Excuse me?”

“We’re in an alternate universe. What do we do now?”

“ _We_ ,” Lex repeats.

“Yeah, Lex. _We._ You got us into this mess. Get us out.”

Lex throws her head back and laughs out loud.

“ _I_ got us into this mess!” She continues on to the desk, running her hands over its surface and opening a drawer. “You’re hilarious. You came into contact with the disc as readily as I did.”

“Fine, we're both to blame. Now what?”

The smartwatch chirps again and she looks back down at it - she sees no way to deactivate the alert, and so she takes a step back and examines it. No buttons that she can see, and a back panel she won’t be able to remove without tools, made out of a material she doesn’t recognize. She narrows her eyes, peering at it - she swipes the tip of her finger over it, testing the texture. It feels metallic. There’s a small strip of metal along the underside of the band that glows with several small lights - infrared? A heart monitor? She thinks for a second, then slips it on, attaching it around her wrist. She taps the face, and it instantly lights up, projecting a holographic interface along the skin of her arm.

“Fascinating,” she says, entirely to herself.

“What is?” Clara asks.

“Shut up,” Lex tells her. She flicks her finger, and the interface springs up from her arm, hovering in the air. She looks down at the email application at the bottom of the screen, blinks, and the app opens. Combination motion and retina control. She could swear someone in R&D pitched something like this to her last quarter. What had they called it? A wristbound?

Clara comes up behind her, peering over her shoulder. “What is that?”

“Nothing you need to worry about,” Lex says, digging into her email. Information zooms past - meetings and policy briefings and messages labeled ATTN: URGENT, all addressed to her.

“Lex,” Clara says, a warning in her voice. “Somebody outside that door is waiting to talk to you. We’ve got less than fifteen minutes to figure out what to do.”

Lex looks up at her. The holoprojection vanishes as soon as she takes her eyes off of it. “That doesn't concern you. I'm here because I'm a genius. You're here by what I can only assume is a tragic accident. We,” she says, gesturing between them, “are not a team.”

“We are right now,” Clara says. “And right now, we’re stuck together in an alternate universe, and we have no plan.”

“What precisely do you want me to do about that?” Lex asks, almost amused by her gall. “Send us back? I don’t even know how we got here.” She squints, not liking the way she worded that. “Correction: I know what event most likely transported us here. I _don’t_ currently know by what process we arrived or how to reverse it. And even if I did, I couldn’t possibly recreate it under the current circumstances.”

“Great,” Clara says. “So what _are_ we doing?”

“ _We_ are doing nothing.”

“What are _you_ doing?”

“Well, if I could get some peace and quiet, I'd be studying up on my new role as President of the United States.” She closes the email app and checks the device settings. She fiddles with them a little, then routes her internet service through a proxy and triple checks for monitoring software, internal or external.

“What?!” Clara looks flabbergasted. “Lex, you can't just go out there and pretend to be the president!”

“And why not?” Lex asks. She opens the web browser and immediately searches herself.

“Because you're _not_!”

Lex opens her own Wikipedia page and flicks her fingers to rotate the screen so that Clara can see it as plainly as she can, written there in black and white.

“Yes, I am.” Her blood hums with anxiety and delight. “Number 46. It says right there.”

“That's not _you_ , Lex.”

“Sure it is. As far as they know.”

“You seriously think you can learn enough in the next…” Clara squints at her display to read the time. “Nine minutes. To convincingly pull a _body swap_ with this universe's version of the President of the United States?”

“Not if you keep talking,” Lex says, flicking the screen back around and continuing to read as quickly as she can. Born in Metropolis, educated on the East Coast, her masters from MIT - all that’s the same, but her masters is in manufacturing, which is a little baffling. Why on Earth would she need a masters in manufacturing?

“So what am I supposed to do?”

Lex doesn't bother looking up. “Bask in your superiority over the human race. Eat bonbons. Crochet. Do a crossword puzzle if you won't find it too intellectually challenging - what do I care? Do whatever it is you do. Just do it quietly.”

“You seriously don't think you might want to include me in this?”

“Why on _Earth_ would I include you?”

“You don't think anyone's going to have questions about why, exactly, Superwoman's hanging out in your bedroom?”

“Why would they?” Lex asks. “We're clearly involved.”

Clara’s whole body goes rigid as she stands there, slightly agape, blinking like the world's most muscular owl.

“...excuse me?”

Lex makes a wordless, exasperated noise. At this point she's never even going to get through the Early Life section of her own Wikipedia page. “I said we're--”

“I heard what you said - why did you say that?”

It's her tone of voice that really gets Lex's attention. When Lex turns to her, the look of consternation on her face is so intense as to be a little insulting. She's staring at her, brow twisted into knots, arms folded, shoulders hunched, and so Lex stares straight back.

“You're in your pajamas.”

“So?”

Lex narrows her eyes a little. “Your hair is in the brush on the sink.”

“And?”

“There are several notebooks in the nightstand in what I can only assume is your handwriting. There’s a second toothbrush on the sink.”

“That--”

“You were _in my bed_ ,” Lex says, half astounded, profoundly annoyed. “What about this is proving so difficult for your tiny brain to process?”

“The _you_ part!” Clara snaps.

Lex stares at her a second longer, a very personal sort of anger boiling in the back of her brain. Then, she turns and marches across the room, and flings open the armoire to reveal the row of blazers hanging inside, only half of which are hers. The antique wood door bangs against the side of the cabinet - she sees Clara wince and it only makes her angrier. She yanks open every drawer in turn: a drawer full of luxury custom-tailored trousers side-by-side with work jeans that wouldn’t be fit for a Dairy Queen much less the White House; a drawer full of $600 blouses side-by-side with flannel in every shade and a ratty oversized t-shirt from the Metropolis Fire Department; a drawer full of gym socks thick enough to swaddle an infant in the Arctic; and finally, an assortment of boxer briefs she’s never seen mixed in with her expensive lingerie, looking like a bustle of potatoes mixed in with an order of European white truffles.

Clara comes up alongside her, taking it all in. Lex watches her wince - watches the interplay of embarrassment and distaste move across her face - and strongly contemplates jabbing her in the eye again.

“Don’t say it.” Clara folds her arms. “It’s not _us_ , anyway.”

“It is for the time being,” Lex says.

“It’s not _us_ ,” Clara insists, glaring at her. “And whoever this alternate Lex is, she’s not you. You have no idea what we’re getting into, this is a bad plan.”

“And what is _your_ plan, exactly? Outside of wincing and denial.”

“It definitely doesn’t involve you impersonating an elected official, I’ll tell you that much.”

Lex scoffs and moves away from her, pacing over to the desk. “Ah, yes, the Ferris Bueller approach - I suppose I’ll just play hookie until we have this all squared away, shall I?”

Clara gives her a look like this much should be obvious. “That’s the most logical thing to do until we have more of this figured out - you have no idea what you’d be walking into out there!”

“Thank you so much for your input, it’s always a thrilling change of pace to get to see the world through the eyes of a witless idiot. Presidents don’t call in sick - what do you want me to do? Cough a little? Look feeble?” As if. She doesn’t spend hours in the gym on a regular basis to look feeble. “Listen to me very carefully, you hyper-moralistic buffoon: even if it weren’t outrageous to consider faking an illness to avoid going in today, me staying in this room denies us the vital data we need to establish anything more about the rules of the universe we’re in.”

“You really think you’re not going to get caught?! They’re expecting you in the _West Wing_ , Lex - who knows what that means, but at the very least it means forming an understanding of the nuances of politics and world events in a universe we’ve been conscious in for all of half an hour!”

“It means they’re expecting me in the West Wing, Clara - and barring a convenient head injury, that’s where I’m going.”

She turns away, the last word leaving a sumptuous aftertaste in her mouth. She runs her hands over the surface of the desk and begins checking the drawers. Actually, now that she’s thinking about it, a convenient head injury might be just what she needs - it would definitely justify any initial fumblings or inconsistencies in her performance, and on top of that it might be enough to keep her in for the day, so she can read up on herself in peace.

Behind her, Clara goes very still in a way that, if Lex was paying attention, would definitely read as ominous. But before she can divert her thoughts to whatever the hell it is she might be up to, Clara reaches out with her foot, and knocks Lex’s feet out from under her just as she’s leaning over the desk. Her forehead connects with the wood with a _bang_ that rattles her whole body, and when she gets her wits about her again she’s flat on her back, groaning and clutching the mark.

Clara crouches over her, a smile tugging at one side of her mouth.

“Okay,” she says, reaching down and cradling Lex’s head in a move that might seem tender if Lex didn’t know her better. “That might’ve been a little petty.”

“I’m going to kill you,” Lex hisses.

“Do it later,” Clara suggests, and then the door opens and Secret Service rushes in. In an instant, Clara’s face has lost all its playfulness - she puts on innocence like a pair of glasses.

“Oh my gosh,” she says with more emotion in her voice than sense. “I don’t know what happened, she was looking for something to write with…”

Lex snarls through her teeth as people swarm her and shine light in her eyes. _Bitch. Genius._

* * *

 

Clara helps Secret Service hoist Lex into bed as her assistant - Peace, Clara wants to say - stands off to the side, looking like someone’s just run her favorite sports car into a tree. The fact that not one person is surprised to see her here is pretty damning, but she's not going to panic about it. She’s _not_. She’s not! She’s not panicking about this in any way at all. She is perfectly calm and could not be described by anyone as panicking about this.

...okay, she's definitely panicking. But she's not going to let it show, is the important thing. Because she’s an adult. And because Lex doesn’t need to know that now Clara knows she was right. And because weird stuff happens to her all the time, and surely this isn’t the weirdest. She’s literally from outer space, this is _not_ the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to her, even if she _is_ currently struggling to come up with anything weirder off the top of her head.

...oh, wait, no. Lobo trying to tell her about his deep seated love of watersports while they were both imprisoned by the Preserver. That was a lot weirder. In fact, pretty much everything Lobo’s ever done has been weirder than this.

Right? Surely being transported to a universe where she’s ‘involved’ with Lex Luthor can’t be the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to her.

Right?

The bruise on Lex’s forehead is already turning... the word for it is maroon, looking like the unfortunate centerpiece of an invisible diadem. Not for the first time, Clara runs a quick x-ray to make sure she didn’t induce any more internal bleeding than totally necessary. Lex is probably playing up the injury, but the pain seems genuine, and it’s all a little too convincing for Clara’s comfort. That, and she did do it in a moment of pure spite, which she’s not entirely proud of, so she’d like to be sure she didn’t do any permanent damage.

Even if it was - admittedly - incredibly satisfying.

“What happened?” asks one of the guards. Clara doesn’t recognize her - she supposes name tags would be out of place with Secret Service.

Lex groans, trying to shift away from them. “Are you blind, or just stupid? I hit my damn head is what happened.”

“Could be concussed,” says another guard. This one, Clara _does_ almost recognize. She’s copper-skinned, maybe a shade or two lighter than Lex, with tightly-woven microbraids that trail down to a cluster of curls at her neck. Under the sleeves of her suit jacket, Clara can see the glint of two silver cuffs that remind her, vaguely, of Diana’s - when she speaks, it's with a soft, lilting accent Clara can’t place. Greek, maybe? Israeli?

Lex groans, somehow managing to avoid invoking her automatic, easy grace as she lolls her head to the side. “Well if I am, by all means keep shining a light in my eyes - it does _wonders_ for the photosensitivity.”

To Peace, the guard says, “Call the physician.”

“She got a meeting in the Oval Office,” Peace says, with an arch tone that Clara really should have expected, coming from Lex’s body woman. “What do you want me to tell them? She bumped her head?”

The guard with the cuffs gives her a look.

“Yes,” she says. “That’s exactly what I want you to tell them.”

Peace rolls her eyes - the thick frames of her glasses are just slightly crooked, like the force of her sardonicism has shaken them loose one time too many. She turns to Lex.

“We’re going to have to postpone with the Kryptonians - this is going to throw off the whole day.”

Clara’s eyes jump from Peace to Lex, then back again. _The Kryptonians?_

Lex, bless her, doesn’t miss a beat. Maybe it’s the pain, maybe she has better acting skills than Clara remembers. Maybe she’s so ticked off that she’s transcended to a level of not-giving-a-hoot that defies all reason. Either way, she manages to peg Peace with a look like she knows exactly what she’s talking about and can’t be assed. “If _you’d_ like to be the one concussed in bed, I promise you that can be arranged.”

A flash of unease crosses Peace’s face that has Clara almost pitying her. “Fine,” she says, looking positively miserable about it. “I’ll let them know.”

This, Clara reasons, is exactly what they wanted. Lex has a head injury, which means they can't possibly expect her to go in to work today. Peace is going to go in, explain the situation, and buy them more time to figure this out. But there’s something niggling at the back of her brain, driving like a needle into the back of her hand. Lex has already been right about pretty much everything so far - what if she was right about them staying in this room denying them the data they need to move forward? What if it breaks the rules of this universe? Clara doesn't know exactly what she means, but she imagines Lex is thinking that whatever it was that brought them here may have designs on them - rules for how they're supposed to act. And this may very well be breaking one of them.

That, and Clara realizes that if she doesn't act quickly, she's about to be stuck in this room again with Lex alone for the foreseeable future. She barely made it a half an hour this time. If they go any longer, she's sure they'll kill each other. But she has no idea what other possibilities there are. What is she supposed to do?

There’s something about the inertia of the moment - Clara can’t name it, but it reminds her of riding the round up at the Kansas State Fair, the centripetal force holding her against the wall as the world whirls around her, gravity caging her in, making blood pound in her temples. Clara learned a long time ago to let her body act on its own. With powers like hers, she doesn’t really have time to think before she acts. She has to trust her instincts to guide her; she has to trust her gut-based lizard brain to make decisions her conscious mind just can’t. And as useful as that is, the leap of faith out into the yawning void never gets less scary - even now that she knows she can fly.

She takes a step forward, and her mouth goes leaping off with the rest of her trailing behind like so much bungee cord. Lizard brain knocked Lex into the desk, and lizard brain does this, too.

“I’ll go with you,” she says.

She expects pushback. She always does - she expects at least someone to take one look at what she’s doing and try stop her. Peace, like so many before her, just nods, like she trusts Clara knows what she’s getting into, which she pointedly does not. “You might want to change,” is all she says.

Only Lex has the proper context to realize what she's done, and Clara sees her, in bed, about to ignite.

“Why you little--”

Clara coughs loud enough to cover the rest of her outburst, and trots over the armoire, feeling absolutely out of her mind.

She reaches in to grab something appropriate for what she can only assume is a diplomatic meeting she really shouldn’t be invited to. What do you wear to a trainwreck? Slacks, maybe? A suit jacket? Who is she kidding, this is insane. She has no idea what they’re talking about. But… Lex has it handled here. Probably. Right? Isn’t it more suspicious if the one Kryptonian in the room doesn’t offer to go salvage things with… the Kryptonians? _The Kryptonians?_ This is so far over her head already. _Kryptonian_ ** _s_** _?_ As in… more than one?

She’s not ready for this, her conscious mind says.

Slacks, sky blue button-down, black oxfords, boxer briefs that won’t give her pantylines, her lizard brain says.

Damn. Alternate universe Clara has taste and a budget.

This is a bad idea, her conscious mind says.

Quick whip into the bathroom, then out again, her lizard brain says. A quick sweep of the leg to get the wreckage from Lex's tantrum out of the way. Ignore the hair brush full of her hair. Ignore the toothbrush with her brand of toothpaste stuck to the bristles. Ignore the shampoo and conditioner in a bald woman's shower. Clothes on, socks on, shoes on. Simple. Straight forward.

She rifles a hand through her hair, curls tangling under her fingers, and grabs her glasses off the nightstand, trying not to think too hard about anything - especially not about the fact that all these little parts of her are scattered carelessly, _habitually_ , all over what is clearly Lex’s bedroom. Definitely not about the fact that she’s apparently going to the West Wing to talk to a group - a _group_ \- of Kryptonians. The dull ache under her breastbone is probably nothing. The panic threading through her skin is _definitely_ nothing.

Lex is looking at her like she’s the only person in the room who has the remotest inkling of what a totally, absolutely terrible idea this is. Clara tries a smile and barely succeeds in a wince. Lex looks straight at her, and mouths the words, _Drop dead._

Lizard brain takes over and has Clara giving her a look that says: _You first._

Peace is looking down at what looks like a smartwatch on her wrist - almost identical to the one Lex has been fiddling with all morning. When she glances up, she does a double take.

“You look nice,” she says, like Clara’s passed a test she didn’t know she was taking. Then, with the nonchalant surliness of a teenager, she says, “Let’s go.”

Clara gives Lex one last look over her shoulder, and immediately wishes she hadn't. If looks could kill, Lex would be reading her eulogy right now. Clara turns away and tries not to think about that, or anything else. In fact, she makes a concerted effort to put Lex out of her mind entirely.

It doesn't work at all. Never has.

* * *

 

They head over from the residence, past a line of trees and armed guards to the Mural Room, where Peace lets them indoors. Peace is short, but her strides feel about twice as long as Clara’s. It’s a struggle to keep up - and that’s without all the stealth-gaping Clara’s having to do. Probably not a good idea to look totally awed by a building she ostensibly spends most nights of the week sleeping in. She’s visited the White House a fair number of times since she put on the cape and tights, but those were all photo ops and pit stops, never longer than a shake of the hand and a pat on the back, a quick and usually inappropriate-seeming ‘thank you for your service.’ It’s never been like this: she’s never gotten to walk through these halls like she belongs here.

She _doesn’t_ belong here, of course, but that’s beside the point.

The whole building seems to ring with history. The carpets are plush, the ceilings high, the architecture ornate, and the hallways full to bursting with people who all seem to be on their way to somewhere important. A few people nod their way, or offer off-hand greetings - Peace nods back but doesn’t waste time with words. She heads around a curve in the hallway; they pass the Oval Office and instead head down the hall and through a doorway, into the office of the White House Chief of Staff.

“She here?” Peace asks the secretary.

“Yes,” says the secretary, as Peace walks right past her to knock on the door.

A voice, calm and measured, calls, “Come in.”

Clara’s trying to brace herself for whatever’s next - her senses are piqued, so even the soft squeak of the mechanisms in the door sound loud to her. She feels itchy in her own skin. Peace detects none of it - she throws the door open like she owns the place, and through the doorway, behind a desk of organized chaos, Clara spots none other than willowy Cynthia Ng, gazing over her paperwork from behind a set of rimless rectangular glasses. Clara blinks, shakes herself - does a double take. Is Lex _sure_ they’re not dreaming?

“She’s not in yet?” Cynthia asks, as though Clara isn’t standing there gawking at her, trying to figure out how she got here so fast. Wasn’t she running for her life twenty minutes ago?

“She hit her head,” Peace says.

Cynthia looks up, a small crease of concern forming between her thin eyebrows. She’s always been a stately woman, and she would look right at home in this office with her soft age lines and her perfect composure if Clara hadn’t _just_ pushed her out of the way of a Kryptonite energy blast.

“She hit her head?”

“Hope thinks she might be concussed.”

Cynthia’s concern deepens. “ _Concussed_?”

“Possibly.”

“How?”

“How did she hit her head?” Peace clarifies.

Clara leapfrogs into the conversation, trying to be helpful. “She was looking for something - tripped. Smacked her head on the desk.”

What she was worried about was not seeming active enough in the conversation - what she should have been worried about was how Cynthia Ng looking directly at her was going to make her feel like an even bigger idiot than she already did. What on earth was she thinking with all this? She wasn’t, she reminds herself - she wasn’t thinking at all. She just incapacitated the one person between them who’s done one iota of research, and now she’s paying for it. Quickly, she glances at the nameplate on the desk to make sure this _is_ Cynthia Ng and she’s not about to get her name wrong. There it is, engraved into the silver: Cynthia Ng, Chief of Staff.

_Chief of Staff?_

She expects scrutiny, but Cynthia, like everyone else, looks at Clara like she belongs here - like, even if she didn’t expect her, it’s not weird for her to be here. Clara thinks the word _‘involved,’_ and winces.

 _Get over it_ , she tells herself. _Run with it._ She has no idea if any of this is really happening, and - if Lex’s words are anything to go by - she doesn’t even have a good idea of what’s happening in the first place. But this is, as far as she can tell, an intel mission, and she’ll be damned if she’s going to muck it up over something as simple as people letting her go where she wants to go and do what she wants to do.

“Is it serious?” Cynthia asks.

“Can’t tell,” says Peace.

“Peace,” Cynthia says, in a tone like a middle school principal. “I’m about to reschedule a meeting with the Kryptonians - I’ve got four meetings all scheduled for the same thirty minutes, there’s a standoff at the Bialyan embassy, a serial killer in rural Pennsylvania, and the US Surgeon General wants to meet with me to discuss our epidemic protocols. I don't mean to be rude, but it had better be serious.”

“They’re not letting her out of bed.”

“That sounds fairly serious for the leader of the free world.” Cynthia sighs, shifting a little in her chair. She’s clearly thinking, deciding what to do. She gestures to Clara. “Is there a reason you dragged poor Kal in here?”

 _Kal._ Her Kryptonian name, flung as casually into conversation as a live grenade. _Kal._ Is that what she's called here? Is that what… Other Her is called? _Get over it_ , she tells herself, more urgently this time. _Run with it. Weirder things have happened._

“I’m here to help,” Clara says. “With the Kryptonians. Or… try. At least.”

Cynthia’s expression softens, but in a way that says, while she’s flattered, she’s not sure that’s entirely appropriate. “I appreciate your proactiveness, Kal. But I don’t want you to feel like you need to act as our cultural liaison simply because--”

Clara’s been a reporter since she was 22 - she knows what it sounds like when a door is closing. A spur of panic bites into her side. “I volunteered,” she says. And then, because she might as well, she pulls something out of Lois’ playbook: the old _‘Your Boss Sent Me’_ move. “I think Lex might feel a little more comfortable about the whole thing if I were there. I know it’s killing her to have to reschedule.”

“She said this to you?” Cynthia asks.

Clara makes a show of sighing and shrugging, a long-suffering look on her face. “Lex? Ask for help out loud?”

It works: a surprised chuckle works its way out of her mouth. Finally, she nods. “I admit, it… might be useful to have you there.” To Peace, she says, wryly: “You know, I’m going to look pretty silly telling a bunch of aliens capable of faster than light travel that our Commander in Chief can’t talk to them right now because she fell and bumped her head.”

“Yeah,” Peace says, like that’s really Cynthia’s problem, not hers.

Cynthia sighs again and stands up. “Alright. Go back to the residence. Tell her I’ll be over when we’re through with the Kryptonians. And try not to let her accrue any more head injuries while we’re indisposed? I realize given your recent track record that may be difficult.”

Peace rolls her eyes and stalks off without any parting words. Cynthia sighs again.

“I don’t know why Lex keeps her around,” she says. “I know Mercy Graves is no picnic, but at the very least she can comport herself with dignity. Nineteen’s far too young to be working for the president.”

Clara has no answer for her, other than ‘you’re probably right.’ She honestly can’t tell if Peace’s brand of cattiness is to Lex’s taste. Insubordination of any kind is usually a pretty big no-no with her; Clara’s seen the violent so-called “exit interviews” that prove it. (Lex always did take the phrase “employee termination” a little too literally.)

But it would be weird to bring up murder at a time like this so instead she just shrugs. “I mean, if Lex could clone Mercy a few hundred times over, that’d be it.”

“For us, you mean?” Cynthia nods a little, “I suppose you’re right.” She moves away from her desk, gesturing for Clara to follow her. “You’re sure you’re up to this?”

 _No._ Not remotely. The world is moving too fast for Clara to keep up, which is absolutely bizarre. Is this how everyone else feels all the time? She’s lying her face off, just trying to sprint alongside it. Is she sure she’s up to this? She’s not sure of anything right now. But she can’t say that out loud, so instead she just says, “I hope so.”

Cynthia clearly hears the nervousness in her voice. She offers a calm smile that does nothing but rile Clara’s nerves. “You’ll be fine,” she says, which seems highly unlikely. “Honestly, he’ll probably just be happy to see a familiar face...”

That phrase alone is enough to make Clara go cartwheeling through another mental ring of fire. _A familiar face?_ What is that supposed to mean? God, she’s gone without using expletives for the better part of the last decade, and in the course of twelve(?) hours (how do hours work when stretched and warped like putty between two universes?) she’s felt more compelled to invoke a series of four-letter words than she has in the last twelve years. She tries to keep calm, take it a step at a time. Lex. Alternate universe. Cynthia. Kryptonians. Sure. She can handle that.

Sometimes even Clara struggles to buy her own bull. She takes a deep breath. This is why Lex is always calling her dumb. All jumping the gun, no common sense gun legislation. Lex can cram more thought into a single second than Clara can cram into a whole afternoon, that much she’s sure of. But this is how she does things, this is how she survives. Body moves, brain follows.

So she smiles, letting her nervousness shine through because it seems reasonable for the situation, and says, “I’ll do my best.”

Cynthia smiles again, then opens the door to the right of her desk. Clara follows her through it, and finds herself, suddenly and unceremoniously in the Oval Office.

Dappled sunlight shines through the windows, which gleam like champagne crystal. Outside, flower blossoms fall like snow, their shadows drifting across the presidential seal on the carpet. She tries to identify what’s different about it: a few technological updates, obviously, there’s a white obelisk standing near their end of the room, overlooking the traditional white couches and coffee table; there’s the Resolute Desk, almost bare, with a small marble table directly behind it, framed by the glass doors. In all, it sings in a way Clara struggles to put into words, but it all looks very much the same as every other time she’s been in here on superhero business. She's staring as Cynthia walks past her, setting a few files on the desk.

“I hope I didn’t seem… overly callous just then.”

“Huh?” is Clara’s incredibly witty reply.

“I mean about Lex. She’s alright, isn’t she?”

“She's got a pretty big bruise on her forehead, but… y’know. Nothing life threatening.”

“Good,” Cynthia says, with visible relief. “I hope you didn't think I was being too harsh before.”

“You're her Chief of Staff,” Clara says, shrugging in a way she hopes reads as casual, but which probably looks like some kind of muscle spasm. “You're doing your job.”

Cynthia smiles again, a little wider this time. “Trying to, anyway.”

Clara walks around the desk, to the small stone table behind it, which bears a few photos and a box of white chrysanthemums that match the ones in the vase Lex threw at her head a little while ago. She assumes they’re staged, but they match the decor. On either end of the table are a pair of small marble busts - one of Alexander the Great in his lion helm, the other of a pharaoh Clara doesn’t recognize, the stone bearing the stubbled scars of age. She peers at it a moment before shifting her gaze to the photographs.

She’s never known Lex to keep or showcase photographs of herself, so she can only assume that this too is staged. But the content of the photos shock her: they seem so personal, crisp and intimate in a way she struggles to contend with. There aren’t many - only about three, all of them no bigger than her hand, the details impossible to make out from the other side of the desk. One is wide, containing a photo of Lex in a gorgeous white suit standing in front of a huge congregation of people outside the White House; Clara can barely make out anything but the smudgiest details of anyone’s face. The second, Clara’s startled to find, contains a picture, a candid, of _her_ \- well, Kal, she supposes. She can’t tell where the photo was taken, but she’s alarmed by the easy, open enjoyment on her own face as she laughs, the way her hand is curled against her mouth, the glint of mischief in her eyes. She stops looking at it as quickly as possible.

It’s the third photo that really captures her attention. It’s the largest of the three, a six-by-nine, professionally taken but not professionally staged, and features both Lex and her alongside a woman Clara’s never seen before. She’s beautiful: soft brown skin and honey blonde hair that unspools in soft waves along the sides of her head, a set of dimples bracketing her infectious grin. She’s not tall - she stands almost a full head shorter than Clara (Kal?), a half head shorter than Lex - and she’s similarly well-muscled. There’s something about her that Clara can’t place. An odd familiarity to her. Clara could swear she knows her from somewhere, but she can’t think of where. It’s like her name is right on the tip of Clara’s tongue. There’s something about her, the soft crease of her chin, the unnamable color of her eyes. Are they brown? Blue? Clara wonders if it’s a trick of the light.

Whoever she is, she’s got her arms around Lex, their heads leaning in together as they grin at the photographer. Clara’s never seen Lex look like that - relaxed and openly affectionate, so clearly _happy_. It’s…

...nice.

Totally alien, but nice.

Behind her, Cynthia is typing on the raised obelisk near the center of the room. Clara turns to see her press a series of keys that cues up a holographic projection of a screen along the adjacent wall. Clara puts the picture down on the table and tries to look like she wasn’t just rifling through Lex’s things, but from the smile on Cynthia’s face, she’s clearly onto her.

“I suppose you don’t come in here very often.”

Clara searches for something to say. She swallows, tugs at a hunch caught in her teeth.

“Well. I mean. It’s not like I’m the First Lady.”

Cynthia hums thoughtfully and Clara breathes a sigh of relief as quietly as possible.

“I suppose not. But I can tell you… I often think of you as though you are. I know I’m not alone in that.”

“Thanks.” _Wish you were._ Clara bites her lip, nerves buzzing under her skin as Cynthia continues typing. “Listen…” How can she phrase this in a way that doesn't _scream_ skinwalker? “I hate to ask, but… can you catch me up a little? I don't think I'm totally up to speed on everything that's going on.”

This finally gets her the look she's been dreading - Cynthia pauses and peers at her, eyes narrowed slightly with suspicion.

“Kara hasn't been keeping you up on it?”

Clara hasn't the slightest idea who Kara is, and she knows better than to ask. She's too deep into ‘uh-oh’ territory already. She wills herself with all her might to be cool - to not react.

“You know how it is,” she says, praying that Cynthia does. At least that would make one of them.

Cynthia, blessedly, sighs and nods a little. “Yes. I realize she’s been fairly busy, of late… I hope you… Well, I don’t mean to get overly personal. I just hope everything’s alright between the two of you.”

This, Clara has no way of responding to. Instead, she shrugs it off. “Yeah. Yeah, we're fine. It’s just…” She swings blindly, hoping for something that'll sound even halfway believable. “Y'know, I'm just never sure how much of this I'm even supposed to know about.”

Cynthia hums as though she understands. “Between her and Lex it must be difficult to know where the person ends and the job begins. I experience that a bit myself, in my personal life.”

She goes back to typing, and Clara can feel the dread welling up in the back of her mouth. “I don’t think it’s going to be a long conversation, Kal. Don’t worry. We can’t really get into specifics without Lex here anyway. We’ll simply… explain the situation.”

Clara doesn’t think she could explain the situation if she tried, but she nods quickly and puts her hands in her pockets. They’re just going to tell them Lex can’t come to the phone right now. She can manage that.

Maybe.

The feed chirps and Clara steels herself - here it is, she thinks as the colors on the adjacent wall hum and coalesce. This is the moment. The moment when she lays eyes on another living, breathing Kryptonian for the first time.

It all feels a little anticlimactic as the image materializes before her. She finds herself staring up at what she’d guess is a man’s clean-shaven face. He has short brown hair, soft brown skin, and a calm expression; he’s wearing a simple dark blue uniform with a collar that looks suspiciously similar to her own supersuit. What really distracts her is his eyes. She can’t tell what color they are. Blue? Brown? Somehow endlessly deep and electric. There’s something unnameable that goes through her, looking at him.

Those eyes are like her eyes - darker, but the same inhuman color that shows when she takes off her glasses, that changes when she puts on the suit and it disguises her face. The soft cleft in his chin matches hers. The soft dimples that bracket his surprised smile are her own.

_He’s like me._

“Good morning, Zor-El.” Cynthia steps back from the obelisk, putting her hands behind her back.

Clara’s head is spinning, _Zor-El?_ Another El. Not just another Kryptonian, but her own biological kin, not that she’d know him from Adam. Her heart pounds and her mouth goes dry. Irrationally, she wishes her parents were here to tell her how to act. She never has to figure out how to conduct herself around Jor-El, artificial intelligence that he is. What is she supposed to be feeling right now? Happy? Sad? Scared out of her mind? She’s leaning towards the former, even though the latter is really making its presence known.

Zor-El smiles back at them - there’s no lag in the video. The footage unwinds like it’s happening in front of them in real time, not a single frame slipping, and Clara almost wishes it would, just to lend a comforting veil of artificiality to it.

“Cynthia,” he says, tipping his head in a way that’s clearly meant to denote respect. “And Kal. What a pleasure, and a surprise.”

His voice is genial, warm. Clara ignores the bolt of _wrongness_ that goes through her when he says her name - _not_ her name - with obvious familiarity and affection, and instead focuses on the strange sensation she gets watching his mouth move out of sync with the words. _Universal translator_ , her mind supplies. The Fortress AI had activated hers years ago - a neural implant that had allowed her to understand Jor-El’s words and visions. Zor-El must be using a translator intended for human ears - speaking Kryptonian and having it translated to English in real time.

“I realize this must not be what you were expecting,” Cynthia says.

Zor-El nods a little, polite even in his confusion. “I admit, I had been expecting a call from your President Luthor.”

“The president is… indisposed at the moment. I’m calling to communicate her apologies. We’re going to need to reschedule.”

“Is everything alright?”

“She has a minor head wound. Nothing life threatening. I can tell you from my years of knowing her and serving as her Chief of Staff it’s fairly likely she’ll rally by the end of the day, and at that point she’ll most likely want to speak to you. But for now, and without making any promises…”

“Of course,” Zor-El says, a serious look coming over his face. “How unfortunate. May Rao bless her with good health.”

“Thank you,” Cynthia says with a nod. “I’ll pass that along.”

“Kal,” Zor-El says, and it’s a bolt down Clara’s spine. His direct attention makes her feel clumsy and nervous. “I’m surprised to see you here as well.”

Clara’s mouth goes dry. She fumbles with a reassuring smile. “Just… thought I’d come as a… gesture of good faith.”

Zor-El smiles as though this makes perfect sense. Thank goodness.

“I appreciate that,” he says. “It’s always good to see you.”

“We were hoping we might be able to make this call worth your while,” says Cynthia, which is a surprise and a half to Clara. She gives Cynthia a look - maybe she should specify what she means next time when she asks to be brought up to speed. “Is there anything you’d like Kal or I to communicate to the President about the project?”

“Everything is going according to schedule,” Zor-El says. “With a bit of hard work and determination, I have confidence that we will be able to complete the vessel within the six-month deadline. As we discussed.”

“No new developments?”

“Nothing we didn’t expect,” Zor-El says. “I hope you will reassure Lex Luthor that her suggestion of inoculation will be completely unnecessary.”

“Inoculation?” Clara repeats at a murmur, but Zor-El clearly hears her.

“Medical intervention to prevent our people from developing the powers this system’s local star has afforded you and my daughter. On that note - we have observed only minor mutation thus far. We believe that, so long as we depart this planet with due haste, none of them will be permanent.”

Well, she’s already stumbled her way into the conversation, so she might as well keep going. Her head is spinning, but she isn’t Lois Lane’s partner in crime for nothing. “Minor mutations - like what? Anything new?”

Zor-El tips his head like he’d rather she hadn’t asked that. “Nothing of significance… A small subset of our group have begun to showcase… slight elevations in epidermal elasticity…”

 _Invulnerability._ “Any increase in strength?”

“A minority of us have shown a slight increase in strength… It’s nothing to be concerned about.”

A rose by any other name… Zor-El’s in full denial, but Clara’s willing to bet that the increase hasn’t been slight, and that it’s affecting more of them than he’ll say. How many are there? Even one more Super-person could present a serious problem, given sufficient motivation. Clara assumes she doesn’t need to worry about that, but Zor-El talks like there’s a whole boatload of Kryptonians with him. One Super-person could be a problem. Thirty Super-people is a guaranteed crisis, whether they mean to be or not. Earth just isn’t built for that - the entire planet is too delicate, too fragile. It took Clara years to master control of her powers, and she’d been trying to avoid hurting people, in no small part because she had been sure, at the time, that she was one of them. And how long had it taken those powers to develop? By the time most of them had reached their apex, she’d already been a teenager - but maybe she isn’t a good example. She’d been a child when she’d landed. Who knows if the sun’s radiation would effect a full grown adult Kryptonian the same way?

“I don’t mean to alarm you,” Zor-El says. “And in fact, please emphasize to President Luthor that she does not need to consider or dedicate resources to such measures. We have the situation well in hand.”

“Lex always likes to have options,” Clara says, trying to keep her voice neutral. Then, she surprises herself: “She doesn’t mean it as an insult. It’s… the scientist in her.”

She’s not sure why she says this, although she is fairly sure it’s true. She’s never really examined the tendency either way, but the way Cynthia nods a little in her periphery makes her feel like she’s right. And Clara’s supposed to say things like this, right? She’s Lex’s… _whatever_ , in this universe. Much as it makes her stomach churn, she ought to have a few casual insights to offer. Lex never minds hurting anyone’s feelings, but that’s not why she keeps her options open - she keeps her options open for the ‘just in case’ scenarios Clara feels guilty even considering. It’s not _intended_ as an insult - she’s just trying to solve a problem, and doesn’t really care one way or another if anyone gets hurt in the process. That’s why Clara’s approached her three times out of three to resolve an oncoming apocalypse the League isn’t prepared to prevent. What the League isn’t ready to deal with, Lex usually is.

...the easiest thing about this role is turning out to be being an expert on Lex, and Clara doesn’t really want to think about why.

Zor-El hums thoughtfully, seeming to turn her comment over. “Yes. I suppose I can see that from her perspective, it may be wise to be ready for anything. Thank you for helping me understand. Even so - I hope you will communicate to her my assurances that such measures should be done only for her peace of mind. They are unnecessary with regards to the facts.”

Clara’s not so sure about that, but she doesn’t say so. Cynthia steps in, in her stead. “We’ll pass that along,” she tells him. “If possible, would you like her to give you a call later today?”

“I actually believe we've covered most of what I would have discussed with her. Please allow her to look after her health.” Zor-El shifts his gaze to Clara once again. “Kal, if you should like, you know you are welcome to see personally the changes underway, both to the vessel and to those beginning to experience symptoms of mutation. Our settlement is open to you, now as always.”

Clara nods, excitement and reticence having a cage match in her chest. “Yeah. Thank you, that’s very generous. I’ll think about it.”

“Please do. I would like the opportunity to assuage your misgivings - and I believe your good opinion of our progress might do a great deal to reassure your President.”

Clara doesn’t think it will. In fact, she can’t think of anything that’ll reassure Lex that there’s nothing to worry about when it comes to hypothetical legions of Super-folks. Her good opinion of them is probably the worst possible thing for the situation. But she can’t say that, so instead she says, “Sure. Thanks again.”

As Cynthia hangs up, she offers Clara a reassuring smile.

“I think that went well,” she says.

Clara doesn’t know what to think, so she smiles back and works on not blowing her cover. She’s already trying to figure out how the heck she’s going to explain this to the woman who, not forty-five minutes ago, was intent on beating her to death with whatever blunt object was closest, and before that was ready to fight her to the death in front of an entire crowd of people. This seems like the sort of thing that might read to Clara as miraculous and read to Lex as doomsday.

Which, if she’s being totally honest, is exactly what she doesn’t need right now.

* * *

 

She’s going to kill her, Lex thinks. She’s going to kill her - slowly. Painfully. And she’s going to relish every single solitary second of it.

The trick is to sell the concussion without overselling it. She has to be too ill to go into work today, but not so ill that anyone’s going to invoke the 25th Amendment. It’s a dangerously thin line, but she doesn't really have a choice but to walk it - something which she hates on principle, and which is _entirely_ Clara Kent’s fault.

Which is why Lex is going to kill her. Slowly. Painfully. Artfully. She’s going to _kill her,_ the simpering _newt_ , the blowhard, the _buffoon_! She’s going! To! Kill her!

It’s a testament to her restraint and acting prowess that the physician - a bedraggled old man she would bet has more firsthand knowledge of failed music careers than medicine - diagnoses her with a concussion just mild enough to allow for her to work from bed. Peace brings her several paper portfolios that she spreads over the bed, and her security team finally seem to relax. The Amazon woman with the microbraids gives her an appraising look before finally agreeing to resume her post outside - Lex makes a note to ferret out her name. She has a keenness about her that spells trouble.

Peace, on the other hand, is very much as Lex imagines she was at this age - fumbling, sarcastic, and remarkably green. Even listening to her attempt to list out her itinerary appears to be prohibitively difficult for her.

“The meeting with the Surgeon General,” Lex repeats, reading directly from her email.

“Cynthia’s on that.”

 _Cynthia?_ Not Cynthia _Ng?_ Lex narrows her eyes, hand curling into a fist in the bed clothes, blood burning with hatred. “Why?”

Peace looks confused, like she thinks she said the wrong thing but doesn’t know what. To her credit, she doesn’t squirm. “Do you… want… to take it…?”

“Do _I_ want to take the meeting _I_ was scheduled for?” Lex says, just so she can hear how stupid she sounds.

“I’ll...reschedule. I guess.”

“You _guess?_ ”

“I’ll reschedule it!” Peace says, putting a hand up like a white flag of surrender. She frantically keys something into her wristbound. “It’s probably about that swine flu thing in Maryland.”

“ _Swine flu?_ ”

Peace clearly gets it from her tone. “I’ll...get the notes on that.”

 _Don’t bother_ , Lex wants to tell her - she’s already way ahead of her, scanning her email. Sure enough, a few notices from Homeland Security and the Surgeon General about a swine flu outbreak in Baltimore. A quick perusal of the news gives her all the information she needs: an outbreak at Johns Hopkins, thirty infected, twelve in intensive care. Authorities were assuring residents they didn’t need to worry, but reminding them to take seasonally-appropriate precautions.

There’s something about the symptoms, though - fever, body and headaches, difficulty breathing, but no increase in mucus production. Vertigo and dizziness, problems with speech and hearing, necrosis of the extremities, one account of a student having a non-epileptic seizure. She’s no expert, but that doesn’t sound like any flu she’s ever seen. In fact, reading a little closer, she notices that no official has said the word “flu” anywhere just yet.

“I want you to have them send a sample of the virus to LexCorp’s medical department,” Lex says, using small words.

“Okay,” Peace says, face muddled with confusion. “Why?”

Outrage feathers under Lex’s skin like iron shavings. She’s gripped with the sudden, intense desire to strangle her to death, consequences be damned.

“Because I told you to,” she says, each word pulsing with venom.

She sees Peace swallow and bob her head, clearly too frightened to speak. Good. That’s the first mark in her favor all morning.

“What else?”

“The Bialyan ambassador is on his way to meet with you about the standoff at the embassy.”

Another quick search of her email - eighteen hostages, six attackers, and almost 48-hours of an ongoing standoff between them and DC police. They’d released their very lengthy and convoluted list of demands to a police negotiator in the early hours of the morning. “I want to meet with National Security before he arrives.” She’ll need to get out ahead of this as much as possible.

“I’ll call Nancy McNally.”

“They’re demanding the return of some kind of artifact.”

“The Stone of Kidesh. Yes, ma’am.”

“Do we know what or where that is?”

“No, ma’am.” Lex doesn’t even have to give her another curdling look before she’s launching into, “We’ll find out.”

Lex doesn’t bother to tame the danger in her expression as she glowers down at her wristbound. “Good.”

Peace swallows, looking distinctly nervous. “There’s--”

Lex stops her with a wave of her hand. She knows her itinerary. She reviewed most of it while she and Clara were talking, and the rest of it while everyone was fussing over her. The pain in her head has morphed from a sharp pinch to a blistering ache, and Peace’s incessant voice is making it worse. “That’s all. You’re dismissed.”

Peace swallows up whatever she was about to say and practically leaps out of her seat. “Thank you, Madam President,” she says, before rocketing out the door like Lex dismissed her for summer break.

As soon as the door is closed, Lex snarls and gets up. She’s needed a little privacy since Clara royally screwed her - a second or two to stand in the middle of the floor with her hands on her hips while she tries not to scream. She stands there, rage so intense that she could swear her very atoms are vibrating with it. Maybe if she stands here long enough she’ll get lucky and phase into a different dimension. Her fingers press into the skin of her hips hard enough to bruise. She wants to ransack the room, overturn tables and chairs, smash every piece of antique porcelain, shred pillows and shake the stuffing out over the White House lawn.

She stands there until she can breathe again. Then, she pulls out her wristbound, and searches for a list of names of everyone currently working for the White House.

By the time there’s a knock on the door, she’s back to her email - she keeps scrolling, taking in as many details as she can as quickly as possible. She’s going to miss four separate meetings today, which all appear to have been scheduled for the same thirty minutes - exactly how many incompetent nitwits is she gainfully employing? If she’s stuck here any longer than two days, she’s purging the entire West Wing and starting from scratch. Peace had gotten through the majority of her itinerary without even mentioning whatever’s going on regarding _a plurality of Kryptonians_.

The Secret Service officer from before opens the door and leans in. “Madam President. Ng’s here to see you.”

Lex scowls. She knows exactly where that little purge is going to start.

“Fine,” she says, still not looking up. “Let her in.”

Cynthia insinuates herself in through the door, all business, and stops on sight of her, looking a little surprised. “You’re up,” she says.

“You noticed,” Lex sneers.

Clara’s close behind her - Lex’s temper is doing the tarantella in her chest. What she would give to have a gun in one hand and her Kryptonite ring on the other, the way God intended. Lex has never mastered the art of masking her murderous intent towards anyone, so she prays this little treatise in absurdity goes quickly. She would so _hate_ to be responsible for almost murdering Cynthia Ng. Again.

“How are you feeling?” Cynthia asks, carefully.

“Delightful,” Lex says between her teeth. “How may I help you.”

“I just… wanted to check in,” Cynthia says, looking thoroughly put off. _Good_ , Lex thinks. Let her boil in the molten iron of Lex’s distaste. “I was under the impression you’d be bedridden.”

“The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated,” Lex says, giving Clara a particularly scathing look.

“Well, perhaps that’s good - I know Ambassador Al-Khandari would like the opportunity to speak with you, if at all possible.”

 _Al-Khandari?_ Lex takes a guess. “About the standoff at the Bialyan embassy.”

Cynthia nods. “Peace mentioned you were planning to meet with Nancy McNally about it. I think that’s a good idea.”

Lex sneers. “I do manage one every once in a while.”

Cynthia falters a little, but continues. “Do you think you’re up to meet with him?”

“Am I to assume that at some point between then and now someone competent is going to rush in here with any pertinent knowledge of what object, precisely, the terrorists _want?_ ”

Cynthia blinks a little, looking slightly gobsmacked. It's to her credit that, after a moment of stunned silence, her mouth falls open to offer only the answer, “Yes.”

“Then yes,” Lex snaps back, mocking her tone.

Cynthia takes a breath and wisely says nothing. She folds her hands behind her back. “Well… I'd focus on the situation with Bialya as much as possible for now. Everything else can wait until tomorrow in my opinion.”

Cynthia Ng’s opinion isn’t one Lex holds in particularly high esteem, and she’s sure it shows on her face.

“I’ll take that under advisement. No imminent death by pandemic on the horizon, then.”

“I don't believe so.”

Exactly the reason she’s looking into it herself. Incompetent, blistering idiots. Thirty people hospitalized on one college campus, and Cynthia Ng’s suggestion is to let someone else handle it? Unbelievable. It’s a damn miracle they haven’t managed to blow this earth to Kingdom Come when their due diligence is this sloppy.

“And the Kryptonians?” she asks.

She’s not sure why she should have to ask at all - why it isn’t the top priority of everyone around her, why it’s the sort of thing that isn’t the beginning and end of her entire itinerary. When Peace said it to start with, she’d expected cymbals crashing, a shattering crescendo. But no one had so much as blinked, and by this point her eyes are watering with all the playing along. And Cynthia, true to form, remains totally nonplussed, as though the idea of contending with multiple Kryptonians almost bores her.

“I don’t think you need to worry about them right now. Zor-El assures me they’re on schedule. Should be ready to leave the planet within the six month deadline.”

Lex scoffs, unable to contain herself. “ _Six months?_ You’re joking. In six months, it’ll be far too late to insist one way or the other.”

She sees Clara’s jaw tense out of the corner of her eye, but she doesn’t bother to look at her. That she objects to the truth is nothing new - if she doesn’t like to hear it she can go literally anywhere else.

“By his account,” Cynthia says, “the majority of the refugees are showing no signs of developing powers.”

“Even one is a problem,” Lex snaps, trying to decipher the situation from context clues. Another living Kryptonian - no, the leader of some kind of _enclave._ Isn’t that just a little slice of hell? Six months on Earth, and it’ll be something straight out of Lex’s wildest and most potent nightmares. She doesn’t even know how many of them there are. Even the thought is making her sick. “We need to take preventative measures.”

“He wanted me to stress to you that he didn’t think inoculation was going to be necessary.”

“Inoculation wasn’t what came to mind,” Lex says, baring her teeth, feeling the absence of her Kryptonite ring like a phantom limb.

Cynthia’s mouth falls open again, but before she can say anything, Clara interrupts. “Cynthia, can you give us the room?”

Cynthia looks between them, brow furrowed, but nods.

“Thank you, Madam President,” she says. Then, she steps out of the room and closes the door behind her. As soon as she does, Clara seems to inflate to twice her normal size.

“Are you insane?”

There’s something electrifying about the heat in Clara’s voice. There’s a soft flush to the high points of her cheeks. Her eyes flash, their beguiling dual hue intensified, and Lex watches her the way a storm chaser watches a funnel cloud, unable to tame the electric thrill of obsession that alights every time she looks at her.

“You’re being ridiculous - read the room, genius. You can’t _lead with murder_ , you’re the President of the United States!”

Lex keeps her voice cool. “You’re not even going to check if they’re still listening?”

Clara pauses - she turns, and Lex sees her eyes glow as she deploys her x-ray vision. She huffs and walks over to the door, flinging it open. Peace startles back, not looking appropriately guilty.

“Peace,” Clara says.

“Sure,” Peace says, before she can continue. She scuttles away down the hall. Lex sees her security detail each take a single step away from the door. She scoffs, turning back to her wristbound as Clara shuts the door. She makes a note to fire them all at the nearest opportunity.

“Seriously?”

“No, go on,” Lex says, not bothering to look up, “you were calling me insane. I relish that, now as always.”

“You _are_ insane,” Clara says, marching across the room to catch Lex’s wrist and force it down, the display vanishing in midair. “You can't just propose _exterminating_ a group of alien refugees for the crime of doing exactly _nothing_!”

“ _Refugees?_ ” Lex scoffs. “Oh yes, poor little demigods. However will they cope?”

“You don't even know the situation!”

“Really? And I suppose in the last forty-five minutes you've become an expert.”

Clara flushes deeper. “I didn't say that.”

“But you've already chosen your side, haven't you?” So damn predictable. Lex could write a step-by-step manual on Clara Kent for every situation imaginable. She's chosen her side because of course she has - she always does, and it's always the same damn side. Whichever one guarantees her continued dominion of the world by force and by spectacle.

Sure enough, her brow creases and her nostrils flare. “So have you.”

Lex scoffs. “If what you mean is that I've had the logical reaction to a pending invasion--”

“An _invasion?_ We're talking about-- I don't even know what we're talking about. This could be… two, three people. An _invasion?_ ”

“Oh, I apologize - you're right, of course, a mere _three_ aliens capable of destroying the planet and subjugating the human race is hardly cause for concern, I suppose I'll wait until we have at least a baker's dozen.”

“Destroying the-- we have no idea what they want! Why would you assume they're violent?”

“I don't need to _assume_. ‘Assume’ implies either that I don't know for certain or that I don't have sufficient proof.”

“And what proof do you have, exactly?”

Lex raises an eyebrow, waits for her to answer her own question. When she doesn't, Lex settles for gesturing to all of her, and tugging at the wrist she’s holding hostage. Outrage explodes over Clara’s face like a fireworks display.

“You’re so full of it,” she snarls. “ _I’m_ violent? Says the woman who’s been attacking me with everything she can get her hands on for the last ten years. Your first impulse when encountering new life in the universe is to _exterminate it_.”

Lex lets out a bark of laughter - the best hearing on Earth and still, Clara Kent remains stubbornly incapable of hearing herself. Critical thought must be a human invention. “No, you’re right, of course - you’re the perfect picture of pacifism.”

Clara bares her teeth. “I didn’t say that.”

“Tell me, oh benevolent Kryptonian overlord, when would you find it acceptable for me to defend myself? Before you and your little friends see fit to obliterate me and all I hold dear, or some time afterward?”

“We’re not-- They’re not my _friends!_ I don’t know anything about these people, and neither do you. What does it hurt to give them the benefit of the doubt?”

“You do realize that before you saw fit to give me a concussion this morning, you’d already thrown me through a _building_ in the last twenty-four hours _._ Let’s not get too high and mighty, shall we?”

“I’m not high and mighty, Lex! This is an extremely simple thing! This would be easy for anyone who’s not you!”

This is the thing that really pisses Lex off about Clara. Thirty-two years old, the most powerful superhero on the planet, and still totally naive; a tyrannical ingenue. A muscular Mother Superior, always ready to order Lex around in the name of her hyperactive moralism without ever first consulting reality. “How unlucky for you, then.”

Clara makes a noise that sounds like a car backfiring and rakes her hands back through her hair.

“Lex, what is your problem? Honestly - we’re both trapped here together right now, why are you so hellbent on…” She trails off, shaking her head, so agitated she can’t properly form words. “Why can’t you work with me on this? Why can’t you just cooperate with me, even a little?”

Lex rolls her eyes, on the verge of yet another bout of sardonic laughter. “God. You never could take anyone standing up to you.”

“Yeah?” Clara glares. “Is that what you call it?”

“It’s what it is. You just can’t abide anyone who won’t submit to you with a smile on their face.”

Clara’s mouth twists with disgust. “I don’t need anybody to submit to me, Lex - that’s what _you_ need, so you can’t imagine that there are people in the world who don’t.”

“There _aren’t_ ,” Lex says. “Dress it up however you like. You pick fights with me because you know I’m the only person who can possibly oppose you, and you can’t stand anyone challenging your control.”

“I pick fights with you? You pick fights with _me!_ ”

Lex rolls her entire head this time, ripping her wrist out of Clara’s grip at long last. She needs to move; anger is pulsing under her skin, making her itch. “Color me shocked to find you incapable of understanding the difference between instigation and opposition. You’re always so utterly convinced of your own moral superiority that it never occurs to you that imposing your will by whatever force necessary might not be an act of incontrovertible _goodness_.”

Clara puts her hands on her hips, expression fiery, tone ironic. “If by ‘imposing my will’ you mean preventing you from murdering people whenever you feel like it, then yeah, I’m a regular despot.”

“Now you’re getting it.”

Clara throws her hands up with a snarl. “What do you want from me? What do I have to do to get you to just work with me a little? You want me to say you’re in charge?”

Lex snorts, opening the armoire to review her - that is, the Other Lex’s - wardrobe. She'd noticed before of course, but now more than ever, the all white aesthetic puts her off. It isn't just that it's brazen; Lex has never cared for white, no matter how good it looks on her. Playing innocent is all well and good, but Lex hardly has an interest in doing it all year round. She’s not _Clara._ She knows the value in being willing to get your hands dirty. It was one of the only useful things she ever learned from her father.

“As though you could bear the thought.”

“Oh, criminy - you do realize-- No,” Clara says, keeping her hands up, palms out. “No. I’m not doing this anymore, fine. You’re in charge, Lex. Since it’s so important to you. Congratulations. Have you figured out literally _anything_ about how we’re getting home yet?”

Lex pauses, her fingers hovering over her racks of clothing. Inky unease swirls in the pit of her stomach.

“...I’m getting a grasp of the political landscape.”

“Great,” Clara scoffs. “Yeah. That sounds very helpful. Thanks.”

Lex whirls around, directing all her anger and annoyance in Clara’s direction. “You’re the one who insisted on me wasting half the morning feigning illness, you fantastic _dullard_ \- I’m acclimating, which, I’ll remind you, you sanctimonious _muppet,_ you _insisted_ I remain here to do. You can’t possibly expect me to have detected the causal origin of a temporal event in less than an hour without access to any instruments.”

“Yeah,” Clara says, with a grimace that makes Lex’s blood burn. “Don’t worry, Lex. I’m starting to realize that expecting _anything_ of you at all was a huge mistake.”

For just a second, Lex could swear the ominous rumble that shivers up her shins and rattles in her chest is all in her head.

But then she smells smoke - tastes something acrid in the back of her mouth. Clara's head swivels like a dog's, and she point her nose towards what Lex can hear is a growing commotion: distant sirens and blaring horns.

“Saved by the bell,” Clara mutters. She reaches for her chest, ready to pull her shirt open, then pauses, seeming to sense the problem.

“You're going in that?” Lex asks, both catty and curious.

Clara pauses, a muddled look on her face. Then she says, “Yep.” And takes a running leap through the window, her blazer fluttering behind her like a cape.

Lex watches her go, her whole body aching with shame like a fever. If she had a gun, she’d shoot her. But instead, she’s forced to simply swallow the last word she couldn’t get in herself. She grits her teeth, grinding them so hard it makes her gums hot, and flicks her wristbound back on, digging into the device with all the violence she’s narrowly restraining.

She finds Mercy listed as the CEO of LexCorp for the last three years running. Good, she thinks. Just as she left her.

Behind her, the door swings open without so much as a knock.

“Madam President,” Hope says. “You’re needed in the Situation Room.”

* * *

 

Clara flies towards danger with anger boiling over in her brain, fists clenched as her clothes flap in the wind. She doesn’t know why she bothers. Lex has never been a team player. Clara doesn’t know why she puts her up to it in the first place. Maybe they’re stuck here together, but clearly, Clara thinks, she’s on her own.

...okay, she thinks, so maybe she didn't set herself up for success with the incident this morning. She already knows Lex doesn’t trust her - slamming her head into a desk probably wasn't the best way to make progress, and ultimately she's willing to admit that her plan wasn't that much better than Lex's. But first of all, she's never met anyone who knows Lex and wouldn't give her a small concussion if they had the chance. And second of all, just because her non-plan didn't come from the mouth of a Mensan, doesn't mean it didn't work. They got more information, didn't they? Not the information they needed, obviously, but Lex had had more time to study up, and she'd gathered valuable intel on the current state of affairs. And did she get a ‘thank you’? No. Of course not. Not so much as a single acknowledgement that she'd been helpful in the slightest. They'd just gone right back to arguing like she'd never even left - heck, like everything is normal. They’re in a whole different universe, but nothing’s changed.

So Clara rockets off towards the newest calamity, secure in her rightness and not much else. If nothing’s changed, then this is all she can do. She tries to tell herself, the wind whipping in her face, that she works better alone, but even thinking the thought depresses her. She knows it's not true without even saying it out loud. She’s not _better_ _off_ being alone - she just _is_ alone. Like always.

She swallows thickly, heart so heavy that it feels like it's dragging along behind her, and tries to focus. Washington, DC, is whipping beneath her at a dizzying place. She flies over Farragut Square towards Dupont Circle, following the smell of smoke, and spots the cluster of cop cars from the air.

After a second of debate, she chances a landing behind a building on a ramp leading to a parking structure. She always finds superhero-ing out of costume a little nerve wracking - overly reliant on her superspeed to make sure no one spots her, and more prone to error than she’d like. She peeks out from her hiding place, trying to take in the scene: squad cars block the street and hem the building, a four story federal-style sandstone affair that sits shoulder-to-shoulder with its neighbors. The black and yellow Bialyan flag hangs limply on a flag post beside the curb, only occasionally lifting on the spring breeze. Taking up the better portion of the street is a blue police tent, where some thirty to forty police officers are standing - most of them in uniform, but a few in bulletproof vests under flak jackets, shouting into radios, weapons at the ready.

Ten minutes ago, the scene might have been tense but quiet - negotiators waiting for their next scheduled call, uniformed officers keeping tired eyes on the windows. But as Clara takes it in, the scene rumbles with chaos, sirens wailing, officers shouting and drawing weapons, holding on the building in front of them, shielded behind their cars. She can smell acrid, chemical smoke, but she can’t see any. For some reason, there’s an enormous hole in the top of the building, as though it’s been struck by a meteorite.

As she’s watching, a SWAT truck tears through the nearest intersection, jumps the curb, and skids through an impossible gap in the circle of cars - the doors burst open and boots hit the road as some ten to twenty masked SWAT team members empty out into the street. They’ve got guns and a battering ram, and seem to be the group of people who know best what it is they’re doing here, but only by a very narrow margin. The captain jogs over to the lead negotiator - Clara identifies her by the title on her jacket.

“How long has she been in there?”

“About five minutes,” says the negotiator. “You need to give her time.”

“Our orders are to breach, now,” the captain says.

“Your orders from _whom?_ ”

But the captain doesn’t answer - just waves his men on, directing them towards the front doors. They hurry on in single file lines like toy soldiers, the tramping of their boots jostling Clara’s heart in her chest. This is getting out of control, fast. She whips her head around, shrugging off her blazer, using her x-ray vision to peer into the building. She spots a group of hostages huddled under desks on the second floor, a few people with guns dressed head-to-toe in black. Delicate. She needs to be careful about how she does this.

A little voice in the back of her head that sounds suspiciously like Lex tells her to hang back - wait, analyze the situation. But caution isn’t her scene, and even thinking of what Lex might say makes her face hot with anger. So she hangs her blazer on the railing, because it doesn’t really belong to her and she doesn’t want it getting dirty, and she leaps in, moving so fast that the whole world freezes in place.

She leaps off the street, arcing up and over the police cars and the SWAT team, their legs pumping like pistons in honey, past the facade of the building, diving in through the hole in the roof. She zooms down through the smashed pieces of cement and broken rebar, through the thin layer of the sub ceiling where wires and tiles dangle like vines from a canopy. She lands gingerly on the carpet, taking in the scene: two gunmen standing to her right with automatic rifles at the ready, heads and faces covered, fingers on the trigger, and one right in front of her pointing the barrel of their gun one way and their head another.

She reaches out nonchalantly and crushes the barrels of their guns, watching with a vague fascination as the metal slowly heats in front of her, blooming red. She reaches out and hooks her toe under each of their ankles, flicking back to upend them, leaving them hovering mid-fall. She pads over to the third, takes their gun out of their hands, and spends some time tying the metal in a bow before putting it back. Then she spins them around, plants a foot on their rear and pushes just so.

Then, she slows down.

Time snaps back into place like a rubber band. The two gunmen to her right crash together, heads slamming together, guns misfiring, superheating in their hands. They shout, falling to the floor. The sound surprises her - it’s oddly shrill for what she was expecting. The person in front of her goes flying into the wall, hitting with a wet thud that makes her cringe.

“When all this is over, we’re going to have a conversation about fighting with your mouths closed,” she says. Then, calling on the universal translator buried in her brain, she tries a little Bialyan: “ _Surrender, now._ ”

Distantly, she hears a crash from downstairs, a chorus of activity from outside. She needs to move quickly - things are heating up.

“ _There’s two of them!_ ” one of the gunmen screams from the floor. No, she realizes from the sound of their voice - not a _gunman_ , a woman, her body swathed in dark clothes to disguise her face and body.

“ _Run!_ ” the other cries, springing up and racing for the window. “ _Run for your lives!_ ”

Clara barely has time to process that statement before something moving so fast even _she_ struggles to see it zips into the room, planting a foot in front of the fleeing man so quickly that he probably doesn’t even know what happened as he trips and goes careening through the glass.

The red and blue blur whips past Clara - grabs one woman and then the other - and tosses them together. It takes their guns and ties them together like balloon animals, twisting the metal like putty, and then lobs both women out the window to follow the first. And then, it whips up to Clara, coming to a stop so abruptly that it leaves skidmarks on the carpet.

“Kal,” says the blur, as it slows down enough to assume a humanoid shape. “What are you doing here?”

There's only a single instant between when she’s speeding and when she’s still - only a second where she's still blurred and out of focus. But to Clara, it’s like looking directly at a mirage. She has to take her in in pieces: honey blonde hair cropped to her chin. Tawny brown skin. Soft features with a heart-shaped face. Clad in Clara’s own red and blue, but different; red shoulder pads, bare arms rippling with muscle, cape strewn out behind her; a blue mesh like nothing Clara’s ever seen zigging and zagging protectively over her body, the El crest on her chest emblazoned in gold. She’s short, which Clara knew from the pictures, but nothing prepared her for what it was going to be like to stand before her in the flesh and stare into those eyes that are just like hers - somehow both brown and blue, living boulder opals.

This time, Clara’s the one that’s frozen in time. She opens her mouth, but can’t think of anything to say.

“I…”

“You need to go,” the Other Kryptonian says, forcefully. “I’ve got this handled. What were you thinking? Somebody could’ve seen you.”

A shadow pushes in on Clara’s sense of awe - something that feels like offense. She tries not to let it show on her face. This isn’t the first time she’s dealt with another hero getting territorial; heck, territory disputes are one of the biggest reasons she tends to stay away from Gotham. Bruce has never been very good at sharing. But usually, people are a little nicer about her lending a helping hand. So she puts her hands on her hips and tries to be reasonable.

“The situation was getting out of hand. I was in the neighborhood - I just thought I’d help you out.”

The Other Kryptonian shakes her head. “Kal…” She sighs, and Clara can hear her exasperation. “I don’t have time to do this with you right now. Go home. I’ll stop by on my way out.”

Then, she does something Clara couldn’t have possibly expected - she reaches out and squeezes Clara’s shoulder, and Clara can tell by her touch that she’s disappointed. A heady dose of confusion joins the uncomfortable melange in her chest. Then, the Other Kryptonian takes a step back and whips back out of sight. Downstairs, the doors of the building bang open. Clara hears clapping and applause.

“Told you,” she hears the negotiator call. “Attaway, Superwoman!”

Clara goes rigid with shock.

“All good out here?” asks the Superwoman who isn’t Clara.

Clara rockets out through the hole in the roof, not totally sure that she’s moving fast enough to avoid being seen. She feels dizzy. She stops in the alleyway to recover her blazer, her mouth dry, feeling distinctly superfluous as the officers grin and congratulate each other. A fear she can’t name sequesters itself in her chest.

She kicks up into the air and starts flying, fast.

Maybe she’s not as alone as she thought.

* * *

 

Dammit. She’s distracted.

It’s Clara’s damn fault. Just had to come in and second-guess her at a crucial moment - now, Lex is walking to the Situation Room with a head full of nettles, unable to focus. It’s not just the pain in her forehead; it’s the deep-seated feeling that none of this matters, and she ought to be focused on other things.

It’s not like she _can’t_ get them home, after all. She has a few methods she could try - and for that matter, there’s nothing beyond her reach. Sure, this might be the first time she’s traversed the multiverse, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t been looking into it. If the wristbound is any indication, her R&D department is as productive as ever, and several years farther along than it is in her home universe. At this point, it may be as simple as getting them to Metropolis.

But even that may be easier said than done; she’s the damn President of the United States. What exactly can she do that’s out of the public eye? Nothing at all, and she knows it - the Press Secretary approaches her midway down the hall about how they want to spin her two hours spent bedridden this morning, and Lex struggles to restrain her desire to say something rude. She’ll have to come up with an excuse to head to Metropolis, which she hates. She wanted this job for the power and prestige it offered - she wasn’t looking to offer the White House Press Corps permanent residence halfway up her ass.

And that leaves her on her way to meet with the Joint Chiefs to sort out a mess Other Lex clearly made, having to plot yet _another_ way to play hookie from a job she could clearly do better than every Other Lex put together.

She’d had to turn the wardrobe upside down to find something usable. The pants are white, but the blazer showcases large black cutouts and black lapels; she’d found a pair of black Louboutins in the back of the closet, and she keeps a confident stride as she heads down the hall towards the Situation Room, Cynthia, contemptibly, at her side. A Secret Service agent opens the door for her, and she strides in, resolved to get this over with.

The Joint Chiefs stand at attention as she walks in. She takes them in: all barrel-chested military men in uniform, save for a stout, light-skinned black woman near the head of the table, who Lex recognizes from her internet search as Nancy McNally. She’s dressed in a navy skirt suit, the copper coils of her hair held up in a bun, and stands shoulder-to-shoulder with a man who can only be the chairman, Admiral Fitzwallace: as dark-skinned as Lex with a thinning wreath of black hair and a well-tended garden of badges gleaming on his chest. He has impeccable posture, a dignified air about him. Before anyone speaks, Lex allows herself the satisfaction of this moment. She almost smiles.

Instead she gestures loosely with her hand on the assumption they’re waiting on her. “Gentlemen.”

“Madam President,” says Fitz, and they all remain standing until she takes her seat, Cynthia beside her. “We’ve just received confirmation from our people on the ground - the Bialyan embassy has been successfully breached. All hostages accounted for, and we’ve got the perpetrators in custody.”

Lex lifts an eyebrow, already irritated. That sounds like a situation resolved to her, which makes this a waste of her time. “And the bad news?”

“We’ve got to find a way to deliver a gift basket to the North Pole,” says one of the generals. The table chortles, chiefs exchanging wry grins. Lex doesn’t join them. Neither does Fitz or Nancy.

 _Superwoman._ Always mucking up her good time. She should've known letting Clara Kent jump through a window towards a national emergency was going to be a PR nightmare in the very near future.

Fitz waits for silence, then continues. “We still don’t know what they want.”

“The FBI has them?” Lex asks, irritation coiling like a snake in her chest. If Clara flew off with Lex’s political prisoners, she’s going to build a canon big enough to launch her into the sun.

Fitz nods. “Yes ma’am. And they haven’t had them for long. But we’ve had their list of demands since early this morning, and we can’t make sense of it.”

Lex has reviewed the list of demands herself - through a backdoor into the FBI database that she could have requested access to, but chose not to. Most of them are standard enough: amnesty for the perpetrators, an absurd amount of money, an escape helicopter, more guns. But there are two demands that they can’t possibly honor without more information: that they return the Stone of Kidesh, and that Lex personally take full responsibility for it's disappearance.

“I can tell you the rough likelihood of my taking responsibility for a crime I haven't committed,” Lex says.

This time, Fitz does smile. “I wouldn’t be here if I thought you should, ma’am.”

No, she thinks. He wouldn’t.

“We still haven’t located the Stone of Kidesh,” she assumes.

“We’re not sure there _is_ a Stone of Kidesh,” Nancy says. “It’s not on registry for any museum or private collection we can find. Now, there's a chance it's some kind of digital file or some sort of technology. But Bialya doesn’t have a robust cache of intellectual property.”

“We're fairly certain it's a physical object,” Fitz continues. “But if it is, we don't know what it looks like or what it does.”

“Or where it is,” Nancy adds.

“Or who has it,” Lex finishes. “That leaves us where, exactly? Ambassador Al-Khandari is still on his way, I presume.”

“We did just land six of his guys,” says one of the generals.

“We didn't land anyone,” Lex says, voice dagger sharp, steel cold. “An alien delivered them to our doorstep in an act of charity. Not a particularly strong position for me to negotiate from.”

The room goes uncomfortably quiet. Beside her, Cynthia has pursed her lips and is looking down at the grain of the table, like she can expect to find the answer there to the question scrawled in the crease of her brow. A few of the chiefs exchange looks. So do Fitz and Nancy. Lex lets them all sit on the hot seat, waiting to see who will be the first to tell her something worth hearing.

“Ma’am,” says another general. “If you have a problem with the FBI’s conduct…”

“‘ _If I have a problem with the FBI’s conduct_ ’?” Lex repeats, to let him hear how stupid he sounds.

The man flushes, pale cheeks going ruddy with red. “I only mean, ma’am - DC police and officers from the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been working around the clock to secure that embassy.”

“Have they? And what do we have to show for that? Other than what I can assume will be a hefty bill in property damages that will be laid at the feet of the American taxpayer.”

Lex lets the question hover in the air over the table like gunsmoke. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Nancy press her tongue into her cheek and tip her head just so. Agreement, silent though it may be.

“Let me be perfectly clear,” Lex says. “As of this moment, Superwoman has proven more capable in the course of what I’ll generously assume is twenty minutes than any of our people have been in the last 48 hours. That is an objective fact. We are sitting here discussing next steps thanks not to the efforts of anyone employed by the State Department, but thanks to the whims of a vigilante with no allegiance to this _planet_ , very less this country. And if that doesn’t bother any of you, then the next time we call a meeting of the Joint Chiefs, I expect you to send someone in your place who can advise me _competently_.”

Another silence sounds over the table. This one, Lex ends herself.

“Since it doesn’t seem like we have anything, I’ll see if I can’t put the screws to the Ambassador and get a few answers myself.”

“I think that’s our best option,” Fitz says, nodding a little. “And we should also be talking about a proportional response. They have to know that this sort of attack won’t go unpunished.”

“Obviously,” Lex says, tired of all of them, but him least of all. “I assume you’ll draft a list of possible targets.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Fitz says.

Cynthia glances at her watch. “He’ll be here in a few hours. We should get you to the Oval Office. Nancy, if you could join us...”

Nancy McNally nods, and Lex stands, sensing that everyone else wants her to. They spring up, a perfectly oiled row of toy soldiers.

“We’ll let you know when we’ve got the list,” Fitz says. “And… Madam President.”

Lex pauses on her way out the door. Fitz regards her for a moment, something brooding in his expression.

“May I just say… I like the suit.”

* * *

 

Clara flies back to the White House in a daze. She’d go literally anywhere else, but she has no idea where she would go. Halfway back, she realizes with a dawning horror that if she isn’t Superwoman here, she may not have anywhere to go; certainly nowhere that she knows of. Maybe Martha and Joan aren’t her parents here. Maybe Bruce and Lois aren’t her dearest friends. Maybe she never worked for _The Daily Planet_. Maybe she’s never saved anyone in her life. Maybe she’s never done anything more interesting than sleeping with Lex Luthor.

God, she feels sick. She has to stop on the White House lawn for just a second because it feels like she can’t breathe. She lands under the trees that line the side of the building - apple blossoms float down, soft petals tickling her cheeks, catching in her hair and landing on her shirt, and she feels like she’s drowning. She tells herself she can do without oxygen for a lot longer than two minutes, but it’s a hollow comfort. She’s wheezing, breath coming in and out to no avail.

She shakes herself and leaps to the balcony to Lex’s bedroom - the Lincoln bedroom, she corrects herself. She doesn’t need to go giving Lex anything she hasn’t rightfully earned. Why do they leave the window open, she wonders? Doesn’t seem safe. But then she realizes it must be because she’s there - she’s there to protect Lex if anything were to happen. She feels her stomach turn upside down, tangling in her lungs. Acid burns the back of her tongue.

She has to take a moment. She puts her hands on her hips and closes her eyes and tries to slow her mind down from a dead sprint. She summons her mother’s advice from when she was a child and the noise of the world got to be too much. _Deep breaths. Count to ten. Just find one sound and focus on that._

Usually, she’d search for Martha’s heartbeat, anchor herself to that. But she can’t bear to search for what might not be there. Even the thought makes her dizzy with terror and grief the likes of which she hasn’t let herself feel since this all started. So instead, she searches for the heartbeat she knows will be there: Lex’s. Unapologetic, unrepentant, steady and calm - she finds it in a moment, and it pulses in her ears, perfect and even. She counts in time with Lex’s heart beat. _One. Bah-bum. Two. Bah-bum. Three. Bah-bum._

By the time she reaches ten, she isn’t breathing normally, but she’s breathing about as fast as she would if her body were properly human, and that’s slow enough. She opens her eyes, and the room is right where she left it, exactly the same. Some part of her wishes in vain that it would disappear, vanish into the smoky tendrils of a dream; that she could open up her eyes and find herself back home.

She shrugs off her blazer and tosses it on the bed - it feels stiflingly tight when she bends her arms, pinching at the shoulders and elbows. She rolls up her sleeves and folds her arms, rubbing her forehead. She’s not sure what to do, at this point. If she’s not Superwoman, that’s a whole half of her life she can’t lead while she’s here. (More than half, she admits to herself.) If she’s not a reporter, that’s another half - though she supposes she doesn’t necessarily have concrete proof of that much. Would Lex willingly date a reporter? Not back home. But they’re _not_ back home.

Actually, now that she thinks about it, that’s a decent point - if Other Clara (Kal, she reminds herself, they call her Kal here) is so different from what she’s used to, maybe Other Lex is too. Cynthia and Peace seemed pretty put off by Lex acting… honestly, as like herself as she ever does. Her average everyday spikeyness seems to come off really harsh to two people who are ostensibly around her all the time.

To that end, Cynthia might be a semi-believable pick for Chief of Staff - recent attempted-murder notwithstanding, Lex _did_ include her in her Board of Directors back home. But Peace in particular is a weird choice. Young, inexperienced, and clearly in a little over her head. Lex isn’t exactly generous about who she trusts to manage her day calendar, and never tolerates insubordination.

Maybe Other Lex is… what? _...kinder?_ It’s difficult to even imagine.

But Clara recalls the picture in the Oval Office, Other Lex’s easy grin - still with that telltale devilish twist at the corner, but without any of the usual signs of reluctance. Maybe that’s it, she thinks. Maybe Other Lex is just… nicer.

She can’t imagine why that would be, honestly. She has no idea why Lex does anything she does - maybe her being nice is as arbitrary as her being… well. Her normal, everyday awful self. Maybe it’s just a roll of the cosmic dice as to which one she ends up dealing with in any given universe. Just her luck that she’d end up in a universe where Lex is deadset on being the world’s biggest jerk.

And then, with a jolt, she thinks of the Other Kryptonian saying she’d ‘come by later’, and realizes that for the second time in a day, she knows something Lex doesn’t know.

“Jiminy Christmas,” she mutters to herself.

She cues up her x-ray vision, turns her head. Then, she pulls open the door, nods to Secret Service, and heads down the hall, walking as briskly as humanly possible, and maybe a little brisker than that.

* * *

 

She finds Lex in the Oval Office. The secretary outside is an older woman who gives her a sideways glance she walks in, and says, “She’ll be done in just a second.”

Done with what, Clara doesn’t know - she peers through the door and catches sight of Lex sitting with Cynthia and a woman dressed in a navy blue skirt suit. Before she can see anything else though, the secretary reaches out and swats at her with a rolled up paper from her desk.

“Excuse me, Miss Kent,” she says. “No looking. When that door’s closed, I expect you to give her her privacy, same as anyone else. Alright?”

Clara blinks at her, trying not to look as totally flummoxed as she is. The woman looks back at her expectantly, and Clara settles for clearing her throat and nodding, taking a step back and putting her hands in her pockets. She’d be lying if she said she weren’t a little embarrassed. Her inertia comes to an immediate and unceremonious stop, and she’s stuck waiting, hands in her pockets, for a chance to talk to the last person she ever thought she’d want to talk to, swimming in embarrassment and wishing once more (and a little more forcefully this time) that she had somewhere else to be. Peace looks at her sideways from her own desk, which doesn’t help.

After a few minutes - all of which pass painfully slow - the door opens, and Cynthia and the other woman come out.

“Thank you, Madam President,” Cynthia says. She turns to the other woman, seeming like she might be about to say something else, but catches sight of Clara and promptly shuts her mouth. “Kal. Is everything alright?”

“Yeah,” Clara says, hating that she has to answer to that name. Nervousness crowds in her chest. “Does she have a second?”

Cynthia nods. “The Ambassador’s flight got delayed. She should have a few minutes at least.”

“Okay. Thanks.” Clara glances at the secretary to see if she’ll be allowed, this time, and the woman smiles and nods. The other woman, the one who was meeting with Lex, is giving Clara an unreadable look, like she’s sizing her up. Clara pushes her lower lip up in a conciliatory smile, and moves past them, wondering if there was something else she was supposed to say. She closes the door behind her, trying to escape the feeling of being on stage without her cues.

Lex is standing behind the desk, looking at the same set of pictures that arrested Clara the last time she was here. Clara sees her run her fingers over the edge of the one of her - well, Kal - and clears her throat a little louder than she probably needs to.

“What do you want?” Lex asks, not turning around.

Clara narrows her eyes. Right. They were fighting, weren’t they? In all the chaos, she almost forgot. “That’s your opening line? Very presidential.”

“Oh, yes - the next time I need lessons in etiquette, I’ll call the woman who makes a habit of jumping out of windows whenever she’s not winning an argument.”

Clara aches to fire back, but she buttons her lip and takes deep breaths until she can let it go. “I need to talk to you.”

“You realize I have a few other priorities to attend to. I’m afraid I can’t dedicate quite as many hours of my day to fielding your puerile insults and managing whatever new PR hell you’ve drummed up in the last hour.” Lex flicks her eyes to Clara’s over her shoulder, tossing her gaze like a still-burning cigarette. “Your latest has us fielding a potential international incident - thanks so very much for that, by the by.”

Clara watches her back, studies her face in profile. There's something about the curve of her spine, something in the flex of her fingers. Something in the steady pulse of her heartbeat. For just a moment, she wonders if maybe, just maybe, Lex is feeling as nervous and destabilized as she is.

So she keeps her voice calm, and offers what she knows just to see if she's right.

“I didn't do anything.”

Lex scoffs.

“It wasn’t me, Lex.”

That's enough to get Lex turn her head, at long last. She peers back at her incredulously, and Clara takes her in: an elegant study in black and white, the bruise on her forehead faded under makeup. She could sharpen a knife on the whetstone of Lex's cheeks, map the globe along the curve of her skull. And she feels almost at home in the discomfort in her expression.

Maybe she isn't alone, she thinks again. Maybe they're both alone together.

“But it _was_ Superwoman,” Lex says, following her as effortlessly as Clara knew she would.

_Bitch. Genius._

“Yeah. It was.”

Lex watches her for a moment, and Clara sees the gears this time: that endless, beautiful network of cogs and wheels behind Lex's eyes, the arithmetic of her mind already running in sequences Clara can just barely follow.

“...interesting,” Lex says, at long last.

“Lex…” Clara trails off, not sure how to say this. “If I'm not Superwoman in this world… we have to assume there have been other changes.”

She expects an argument, but Lex doesn’t give her one. She’s too busy opening that damn wristbound again, fingers flying as she keys in some new search term. “You should’ve assumed that already. But I suppose one can only expect so much.”

Clara rolls her eyes but doesn’t let herself get distracted. “I don't know how we're going to keep this up. We don't know enough about the people we're supposed to be. Someone’s gonna find out. And I don't know what happens then.” She's losing her breath again, and she takes a few steps back, trying to quash her panic. “...we got here somehow. We have to be able to get back.”

Lex tips her head to the side in a way that says she's not convinced. “In theory.” She’s still reading.

“Lex--” Clara exhales, short and sharp. “Lex, I have to get home. I can't just… live someone else's life.”

“Yes,” Lex says, slowly. There's something ugly and mocking about the sympathy in her tone. “I imagine this is very hard for you.”

All the softness drains from Clara's chest.

No, she thinks. She's alone. Totally and completely. She's as alone now as ever.

“How very sad for you,” Lex poo-poos. “How very unfortunate. Someone else has their boot on the neck of the world. Another Kryptonian, I presume? One of your well-meaning refugees?”

Clara clenches her fist. She looks at the picture on the table right behind Lex, and thinks about saying out loud what she’s pretty sure she knows - but no. No, Lex can find out on her own. She’s not going to say a thing. She just shrugs. If she speaks, she thinks her voice might shake. Lex’s heartbeat is too loud now in her ears. It dominates the room, bounding effortlessly over the top of every other sound, sinking its claws into Clara’s brain.

“I don’t know,” she says. Not technically a lie. She has no idea if this new Superwoman is with Zor-El or not. Her money’s on ‘probably,’ given the El shield on her costume and the family resemblance, but she can’t say for sure, so she’s being honest. Sort of.

“What’s proving more difficult for you: the fact that you won’t be the one pounding us into submission, or the fact that this proves I’ve been right about you all along?”

Clara chokes on her disbelief. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s exactly what I’ve said from the very beginning: no one with your powers can resist the siren’s call of world domination.” Lex’s eyes are moving so rapidly over whatever’s on her screen that it makes Clara a little dizzy - or maybe that’s the anger talking. “Turns out you’re interchangeable with every other meathead who could wear that suit. Sooner or later, you all swoop in to shepherd the sheep.”

Clara has to laugh, has to look away, because otherwise she’s going to punch her. Her fist is clenched so tight it’s shaking. “God, Lex. You’re really… You’re really a piece of work.”

“Call me whatever you like,” Lex says. “I’m right. And I’ve _been_ right all along.”

“You really can’t conceive of anyone just… wanting to help people?” Clara shakes her head a little. “Because it’s the right thing? Because they’re a good person?”

“Good people don’t exist,” Lex says. “No one does anything for anyone but themselves. That you continue to live in ignorance of that fact is a privilege.”

“Oh well, please,” Clara scoffs, and she’s so exhausted all at once. “Educate me, then.”

“It’s simple, really. Much as you’re loathe to admit it, Kryptonians are just like every other animal: driven by selfish instincts, hungry for the power to bend the world to their whims.” She shrugs with one shoulder, still chin-deep in search results. “I suppose in that respect, I can’t blame you. If I had your abilities, I’d do the same thing: decide the laws for myself, and enforce justice as I see fit. After all,” and she looks Clara directly in the eye, “who could stop me? Who would dare?”

Clara doesn’t point out that this is essentially what Lex already does, but only because she’s starting to realize that Lex, vampire she is, is incapable of seeing herself in mirrors. Instead, she tightens her jaw, trying not to grind out the words: "I might."

Lex scoffs. "Not if you want to get home you won't." She looks up. "Selfish means to selfish ends. You  _need_ me."

Clara almost laughs. "You're seriously going to stand here and tell me that wanting to get home is  _selfish?_ "

Lex raises an eyebrow. "Isn't it?"

"We  _have_ to go home, Lex. Before someone finds out."

"And what exactly are  _you_ doing to help us achieve that honorable goal?"

Clara opens her mouth, but she doesn't have a good answer. 

"I'm doing things," she says, lamely. "I doing... plenty of stuff."

"Things  _and_ stuff? My, my. How _do_ you find the time."

"I'm doing reconnaissance," Clara says, stubbornly. "I'm going out and getting information. Information you need and don't have. Stuff you're not gonna find on Wikipedia."

Lex is staring at her like she's the single dumbest person in the multiverse, face rendered blank with disgust.

"Like  _what._ "

That's a good question - but just as Clara's beginning to grasp at straws, the sound of footsteps on the carpet outside reminds her that she's actually  _not_ completely full of shit after all. She points.

"Like who's outside that door."

The doorknob turns and the sour-mouthed secretary pokes her head inside.

“Madam President,” she says. “There’s someone else here to see you.”

And then, without waiting for an invitation, the Other Kryptonian strides into the room, just like Clara knew she would. She walks in, grinning, looking at Clara and Lex like she expects them to be happy to see her.

“Hey. Am I interrupting?” she asks.

Clara looks at Lex to say she told her to. But it's a second too late for that. She's treated to the sight of Lex looking past her, putting two and two together. She glowers at Clara, but like she doesn't really have time to commit to it. When she looks back at their guest, she puts on a smile - a vague approximation of the smile she’s wearing in the photo directly behind them, a devilish twist with a dash of Hollywood charm.

“Not at all,” Lex says. “Hello, Kara.”

The woman - Kara? - laughs, cheeks dimpling instantly, and before Clara can stop her, she’s flung her arms around them, squeezing so tight it pushes the breath out of Clara’s chest.

“And here I thought you were gonna be mad at me,” Kara says, and this has to be the most emotional whiplash Clara's ever endured in her life.

But as Kara takes a step back, Clara feels Lex leans into her like… well, like she supposes Other Lex might lean into Kal from time to time. She’s warm and strong, but Clara feels how rigid she is: Lex’s body is so taut it’s a miracle she’s not shaking, unease - maybe even fear - billowing off her in spite of the easy expression on her face. Her heart is banging against her ribs like a screen door in a tornado.

Maybe it's not really the time for an 'I told you so,' after all. Maybe to earn that, Clara would have had to actually... tell her. 

 _Next time_ , she tells herself with an absurd and totally foreign surge of guilt. And then, she braces.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Lex’s outfit: https://honestlywtf.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/esther3.jpg)
> 
> (Clara’s eye color: https://assets.catawiki.nl/assets/2018/4/11/b/6/d/b6da3644-3b64-4e81-b27e-ac5af9729c51.jpg)


	3. Force of Habit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meeting Kara puts Clara and Lex's acting skills to the test. The two of them quickly find themselves falling into old habits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's a little shorter than the last two, but it's an outlier. We'll be back to comically long chapters shortly, I promise. c;
> 
> For those who would like a visual while we're waiting on illustrations from yours truly: the part of Kara will be played by Alexa Vega.
> 
> Tws for this chapter: emotional and physical child abuse, Lionel misgendering Lex (which he will keep doing for a while, strap in), and someone's going to have a panic attack.
> 
> Update 03/21/2019: I've retroactively changed a superfluous detail in this chapter and past ones. New readers: just ignore the lady behind the curtain! Established readers: points to whoever figures out what it was. c;

At first, Lena calls everyday. She sends packages. She writes letters. Lex knows because she hears her voice in small, three-second clips before Lionel erases her messages from the answering machine. She knows because she sees the packages and letters in the garbage when the cleaning staff take it at night. Sometimes she tries to get it away from them and very rarely, she succeeds. But mostly she just listens, watches, filled with longing like a hunger, sorrow like a constant ache. She writes Lena back, every day. _Lena. I miss you. You and Pamela have to come get me. Please come get me. Please come take me home, take me back, take me away from here._

When Lionel finds these missives, he tosses them casually into whichever fire or shredder is closest. Lex learns to hide them after that. If Lena cannot come for her, she thinks, she'll go to Lena. She writes to her secretly, letters she’ll show her when they're together again. She knows her way back home. And even if Pamela is to blame for all of this - which Lex suspects more and more each day that she is - Lena is her home. Lex knows this with absolute certainty.

She’s seven the first time she runs away. They’re at a silent auction being hosted at the local museum of modern art - not an event of Lionel’s, or security would be tighter. It’s late, but Lex has grown accustomed to being up late. She lives by Lionel’s schedule, and Lionel disdains sleep and has limited patience. He’s leading her around with a hand on her shoulder that might as well be a leash, introducing her to his friends as his son.

It would be a lie to say she’s been looking for an opening. At seven, strategy and foresight aren’t really her forté. She simply sees an opportunity and takes it: a gap opens in the crowd just as Lionel’s grip loosens for the first time all evening, and she’s bolting before she has time to think. She dives through the crowd, loses her suitjacket, dashes through the metal detectors and down the stairs. She’s out the doors before anyone can catch her, and she’s halfway down the street before a security guard catches up with her, scooping her up and wrestling her back into Lionel’s arms like she’s just another unruly child.

“ _Thank_ you,” Lionel says to the guard, holding her so tightly she can barely breathe, let alone cry for help. He shakes his head a little, like this is something a bystander could understand. “You know how boys can be.”

He locks her in the car for the rest of the evening and leaves his security detail to watch her. She tries to unlock the doors and is promptly foiled by a guard wielding the key fob.

When Lionel finally comes back, it’s after midnight. He sits down in the driver’s seat and looks at her, hard. Then he slaps her - only once, but with his whole palm, which is enough to make her cheek swelter.

She’s expecting more than that - a real beating, which Lionel has never been averse to. But instead, he drives them home in silence, and sends her to bed without dinner. When she wakes up, there are guards at her door.

She still doesn’t understand, then.

In fact, she runs away another five times before she starts to get it. The second time, she darts away from Lionel on a red carpet, escaping under the rope line, and is quickly brought back by security. The third time, she jumps out of the car when they’re stuck in traffic and has to be chased down by Highway Patrol. The fourth time, she stows away in the trunk of her tutor’s car.

The fifth time, she’s ten - it’s her most ambitious attempt to date. After months of preparation and a faked interest in rock climbing, she throws on her backpack and uses her new equipment - all of it secretly modified to her own specifications with tools she appropriated from Lionel’s horologist - to rappel down from her bedroom window. She waits for the night watch to pass, then scales the rock wall that runs around their property and escapes into the forest, following the road. She subsists on water and protein bars for two days before she gets to the nearest town. It all falls apart when she gets to the bus station. The ticketmaster smiles and agrees to sell her a Greyhound ticket after he makes a quick phone call. Within twenty minutes, she’s surrounded by police officers, being forcibly carried to a patrol car. They handcuff her for her trouble.

She screams. She bucks in their arms. She tries to tell them about Lionel, tries to tell them they can't take her back, but she doesn’t have any recent bruises, and it’s clear they either don’t believe her or don’t care. By the time they’re pulling back up to the mansion, she’s screamed herself hoarse. They deposit her in the foyer in front of her father, and leave after they’ve all exchanged ‘ _thank yous_ ’ over Lex's bald head.

She stands there, hungry, exhausted, and furious. She waits for her punishment.

“Well?” her father asks. “Have you learned your lesson?”

“What lesson?” Lex asks, sullenly.

Lionel grips her by the chin and forces her to look at him. She keeps her eyes averted, and he yanks at her jaw so hard she stumbles towards him.

“That you can’t get away from me, Lex,” he says, his voice frighteningly calm.

Lex starts to tremble; whether from anger or fear, she can’t tell. “Yes, I can.”

“No,” he says. “You can’t. No matter how far you run, you’ll always end up right back here. And do you know why?”

Lex knows he’ll tell her, whether she does know or not. At first, she doesn’t answer, but then he squeezes her jaw so tight that she whimpers.

“You’re _hurting me_.”

“That’s the point, Lex. Someday, you’re going to learn. You know, even a dog can learn. You’re smarter than a dog, aren’t you Lex? You can follow simple commands. _Look._ At me.”

She does to make the pain stop. Even in the moment, the humiliation is so strong that it overrides Lionel’s grip as the source of her suffering, burning through her with brutal force. He’s gazing at her, utterly calm, and for just a second she sees what everyone else must see: a handsome autocrat, a king in everything but name.

“I said: no matter how far you run, you’ll always end up right back here. Do. You. Know. Why.”

“Why.”

“Because you belong to me, Lex. I own you. I _made_ you. My blood runs through your veins. Someday, you’ll be grateful for that. But in the meantime, you can meditate on this.” He leans in close so she can smell nothing but his Clive Christian cologne. “There is nowhere on Earth that you can run where I won’t find you.”

He lets go of her chin and takes hold of her arm, leading her up the stairs so forcefully that her feet barely touch the floor.

“No matter how far you run - you’ll still be a Luthor. I’ll be right there inside you, same as always. And there is not a thing you can do that will change that.”

He tosses her into her room, but even as his hand leaves her, she feels him all over, like she's a marionette with her strings tangled around his fingers. The door closes and locks, and she’s screaming before she even turns around. She throws her body up against the wood but it doesn’t give an inch - she screams and beats it with her fists, so hard it leaves bruises up and down her forearms. She screams so loud and so hard that her vision tunnels. Her mouth burns with the smell of Lionel’s cologne. She stumbles back from the door, blind with rage and with agony, and runs for the windows. She yanks them and finds them glued shut. She screams again, whole body ringing with pain, and she can feel blood pushing through her temples and her wrists. Lionel’s blood. Lionel, inside her, never letting go.

She grabs the chair from her desk and hurls it through the window with all the force she can manage. The glass smashes, and she’s dizzy, drunk with rage.

He can’t have her if she’s dead, she thinks, flooded with vindication, just before she flings herself through the window of the second story.

On the ride to the hospital, Lionel looks almost impressed. Even when she finally comes to in the body cast, he looks proud, like she's gone and proven his point for him.

“That’s my boy,” he purrs, and Lex wishes she could turn her head to hide it when she scrunches her eyes shut, chest thick with disgust, and cries.

* * *

 

It’s about the time that Kara is taking a step back from them that Lex is beginning to think she really should have read the section of her online bio that read “Relationship with Superwoman.” That's her own fault, really. She assumed she already knew with relative certainty what that section would say.

Now, she’s struggling to make any deductions at all - and not just because Kara throwing her arms around her made the fine hair at the back of Lex’s neck stand on end, horror and disgust clustering in her gut. And not because Clara's standing so close to her that it's hard to focus on anything outside of how good that feels, how warm she is, and how naturally Lex fits against her. Although all that certainly isn't helping. She feels like a cat that just got flung into a hot bath trying to make the most of her circumstances. She wants so badly to be outside of this room that at this point she may very well crawl out of her own skin to get there.

She tries to read something into Kara’s appearance: strong, feminine. A bit shorter than Clara, which is interesting, but not very useful - Lex had assumed all Kryptonians would share Clara’s towering height and massive build, but this one’s a full foot shorter, if similarly muscular. Her soft brown skin is just a shade or two off from Clara’s, and she has the same soft cleft in her chin, like Pygmalion himself pressed a tender thumb into the clay of her - the same dazzling dimples bracket her perfect smile, and she has the same unearthly hue to her eyes. They’re a lighter blue-brown, turquoise threaded with gold, but it has the same effect on Lex; riveting, dizzying, hypnotic. Looking directly at her is unnerving, not the least because the family resemblance is unmistakable.

And they _must_ be related - it’s true that the resemblance could all be in her head. It could honestly be that any two Kryptonians are as distinguishable from one another as a pair of penguins; she _is_ talking about cross-species individual differentiation at this point. But the El shield doesn’t leave much room for argument. The articles she’d poured over had listed her as Kara Zor-El - a cousin, maybe? That, or a typo, be it literal or existential. Maybe Jor-El’s name is different here and this is Clara’s sister. That there’d be two Kryptonians on the same planet, very less from the same family, very less within the same - what? Five years, going by what she’d guess are their ages? - is so astronomically improbable that at this point Lex would believe anything. Assuming they both would have landed on another planet in the Milky Way at all - a, frankly, _insane_ assumption to make - the chances are approximately 200 billion to one.

The universe is absolutely batshit. That’s a scientific fact, no use disputing it now.

As Kara takes a step back and regards them, Lex tries to pull something useful from the six separate articles she’s just poured over about her - something more than her name and her list of powers, which would appear to be identical to Clara’s in every way. She’s not sure why news outlets always seem to think that’s worth reporting on; plenty of utter schlock about how many schoolchildren she’s saved in the last month and how many doddering grannies she’s helped cross the street, and nothing at all that would be useful in a one-on-one conversation.

“Alright,” Kara says with a sigh. “I think maybe I was right and you _are_ mad at me.”

“We’re not mad at you,” Clara says, like the tireless sycophant she is. Lex can’t imagine how she intends to follow that statement up, and neither, it appears, can Clara, who promptly begins floundering like a first-class moron. “I… We…”

“No,” Kara says, putting up her hands. “It’s alright. I get it. I know I said I’d be by last night, I just… you know how crazy it’s been lately.”

“Of course,” Lex says, because she actually _does_ know that, which is a first. She doesn’t think she manages to inject the right amount of simpering understanding into her tone, but at this point that’s the least of her concerns. She’s more concerned about her dance partner, whose overactive hindbrain may very well be the death of them both at this rate.

“You don’t owe us an apology,” Clara says, and Lex can’t help the sideways glance she gives her. She shifts the sharp point of her heel over Clara’s toe and grinds down, slow enough not to draw Kara’s eye, but hard enough for Clara to notice. Clara doesn’t look at her, smiling at Kara like there’s nothing remotely weird about all this. “We know how busy you are, it’s okay.”

“I might be busy, but you’re still my family,” Kara says, putting her hands on her hips. “And…” She sighs. “Kal - we definitely need to talk.”

Clara’s face creases with confusion and dismay, and Lex tries to look like she knows what this is about.

“I mean... “ Kara sighs again, like she really doesn’t want to be having this conversation, but feels obligated. “Pumpkin, you showed up to an active hostage situation. You _know_ we have to talk about that.”

“Maybe I should leave you two to sort this out,” Lex says, trying not to relish in her good luck. For just a second, she smells the sweet scent of freedom - but this time, it’s Clara who puts her arm around Lex and holds tight enough that she couldn’t run if she wanted to. Lex pushes her elbow firmly into Clara’s stomach, trying to twist away from her, but she can’t without drawing attention to herself.

“No,” Kara says, “Lex, I want you to hear this too.”

_Just perfect._

“We’ve talked about this - if you want to get involved in hero work, I… guess I can make peace with that. But you can’t just go jumping headfirst into danger like that.”

“Like what?” Clara asks.

“Like… Kal.” Kara tips her head like she’s trying to be reasonable. “We’ve worked really hard to give you a normal life. If you want to give that up, that has to be a decision you make… thoughtfully. With a proper regard for everything that entails. You can’t just show up in street clothes and… wrestle some terrorists!”

Lex knew this was going to be a problem. Clara is _always_ a problem. Admittedly, Lex hadn’t foreseen that the problem would be with another hero, but this is what Clara gets for always showing up where she isn’t wanted. They’re barely just managing to fly along by their seat of their pants, and Clara may very well have mucked it all up in the course of a single afternoon, all because she can’t mind her own business.

But Lex doesn’t get a chance to say her piece on the subject. Instead, she feels the first pulse of offense that runs through Clara’s stomach. She tries to ignore the prickle of electricity at the back of her neck. She knows without looking up what face she’s making - slightly questioning, slightly guarded. Clara’s deciding whether or not she’s going to get mad about this.

“I was in the area,” she says, slowly, and oh, there’s that edge - Lex usually loves that edge, loves the quiet question of ‘ _you really want to do this?_ ’ lingering in Clara’s tone. But her timing’s off; she can get mad later. She anchors her heel against Clara’s toe, and Clara moves her foot, not even looking at her. “I thought you might need some help.”

“You were in the area because you live in the White House,” Kara says. “And, as much as I appreciate it, I had it handled. Pumpkin, we've been over this. If you're going to do this, it has to be for the right reasons.”

Ah, yes - the ‘right reasons.’ Lex almost rolls her eyes. Kryptonians and their so-called noble causes.

“What's wrong with me trying to help people?” Her voice is so full of self-righteous disbelief that Lex almost gags.

“ _Nothing_ ,” Kara says, and it's so heartfelt that Lex really does gag - the hypermoralistic _posturing_ of it all. She's going to be sick. Do they even hear themselves? Can they hear how utterly ridiculous they sound, or do they really believe this garbage? “Nothing at all. I know you want to help people - you have a good heart, we all know that.”

Lex muscles back a snort. _Speak for yourself_. Clara's grip on her tightens disciplinarily, like she can hear Lex's thoughts.

“But this is a choice you can't unmake once you've made it,” Kara continues, clearly treading lightly. “And if you're going to choose this with… all it entails. I need that to come from you. Not from anyone else.”

She gives Lex a look that's a little too weighty for her to ignore. And so Lex tips her head just so, and bites.

“Implying what, exactly?”

“Lex…” Kara purses her lips, seeming to choose her words very carefully. “I just mean… I don't need you encouraging her.”

“Encouraging her to _what_?”

Kara looks put off-kilter by the question. She gestures a little with her hands. “This. Saving people. Superheroing.”

The room goes very still for a moment - Kara looking at her, Clara looking at Kara. Lex waits for something else, something slightly more reasonable. Then, she feels a tug of absurdity at her stomach. She can't help it: she bursts out laughing, rich and loud. She throws her head back and laughs harder than she's laughed in a long time. When she finally comes up for air, they're both staring at her with twin looks of total consternation, and it's almost enough to pitch her headlong into another fit of giggles. But it doesn't. She stops laughing as abruptly as she started.

“You're joking,” she says, to give her an out.

“...no, Lex,” Kara says, after a moment. “I'm not.”

“Then you’re deranged,” Lex says.

“Lex.” Clara’s giving her a warning, telling her to back down - _idiot._ She should know by now the stubborn heat that kindles in the back of Lex’s brain.

“There is quite literally no one on the face of the planet who wants Kryptonians meddling in human affairs less than I do,” Lex says, emphasizing each syllable as clearly as possible, since she’s clearly working with simpletons. “And, in fact, no one who’s gone to greater lengths to prevent it. You couldn’t pick a less suitable co-conspirator if you picked one out of the crowd at a Kryptonite convention. I,” Lex says, pointing between them, “have less than _nothing_ to do with this.”

Kara folds her arms, looking so much like Clara as she does so that it’s a little uncanny. “You’re really going to stand here and try to tell me you didn’t ask her to help you with this?”

Clara cuts in before Lex can retort. “She didn’t.”

Kara puts one hand up, but keeps the other tucked across her chest. “Pumpkin, I don’t-- you don’t need to defend her to me. Okay? I’m saying this with love, you don’t need to get your hackles up. Either of you.” Her words are reasoned, but her expression is hard. “Lex, if you have a problem with me, you can say so.”

Lex bites back, tone snide. “If I have a problem with you coming here to accuse me of spurring Kal to vigilantism, you mean?” It feels totally unnatural to call Clara by her Kryptonian name - it feels clumsy coming out of her mouth. “I don’t have time to resolve every petty, baseless accusation you can come up with in what I can only assume is your wealth of free time. I’m a little busy cleaning up the mess you just made of US foreign policy on my watch.”

“Oh Rao,” Kara says, but in a tone like she knew this was coming. “Okay. Alright - you want to do this right now? We can do this right now. It had been _two days_ , Lex. How long do you expect me to hang back? There were people in danger, who else was going to help them?”

“Maybe the literal _flock_ of police officers and federal agents who had the building _surrounded._ ”

Kara throws both hands up this time. “They had two days! It didn’t look like they were making much headway to me.”

“Oh, of _course_ ,” Lex sneers, pressing a hand to her breast, full of mock sincerity. “I didn’t realize we were operating on _your_ time table, my mistake. I’ll have the FBI Director run this all by you next time, shall I?”

Clara’s hand moves up her back to press down hard on her shoulder, like she’s planning to shove Lex and everything she just said through the floor. Lex ignores her, temper hot under her skin.

“Listen,” Kara says, like this is a conversation they’ve had before and she doesn’t like having to spell this out a second time. “I told you I’d hold off for as long as I could. What did you want me to do? Let those people die?”

“If it meant preventing an international incident? _Yes_.”

“Would you two please just _chill out?_ ” Clara says, butting in the way she always does, putting herself between them like there’s going to be a brawl. Lex is delighted to see Kara be the one elbow past her, pushing her aside and continuing like she hasn’t said a thing. Clara’s left on the outside, blinking.

“Wow,” Kara says. Her hands find her hips again and she shakes her head. “Okay. What is your _damage_ , Lex? I just did you a favor.”

“What you _did_ is what you always do,” Lex snaps, and she has no idea if it is or not, but the probability is acceptably high. Kara’s so much like Clara that Lex feels completely secure in talking to them like they’re the same person. She has every confidence that if their places were reversed, it would be Kara’s hand on her shoulder, trying to hold her back. “Presumed your might made right. You really think I want two of you imbeciles flying around, making my life hell? I can’t stand that there’s even one of you.”

Clara reaches out and physically pulls Lex back - Lex fights the urge to claw at her, even knowing it’ll blunt her nails. But the damage is done. Kara gives Lex a look like she might as well have just reached out and decked her. Shock and betrayal splays openly across her face for a moment, only to be replaced a second later by the quiet burn of rage. The threads of gold in her eyes ignite to open fissures.

“Well,” she says, face twisted with bitterness, “then you can rest easy, because in a few months, there won’t be.”

Lex knows a live verbal grenade when she hears one - Kara lobs those words at Lex’s feet like a lit stick of dynamite, and Lex can see from her face that she’s waiting to see it twist daggers in her. Too bad, she thinks. Cutting turn-of-phrase only works when your opponent gives a damn, and she couldn’t care less. She shrugs with both her mouth and her shoulders, and lets Kara see instead how utterly unbothered she is.

Kara exhales a shakey, scoffing laugh and shakes her head. “Y’know, Lex,” she says, and her voice is slightly uneven. “I know you’re pissed off, but this isn’t exactly a picnic for me either. I don’t know what this is about.” She gestures to the two of them still standing together, and Clara steps away from Lex instantly, pulling her hands away. “This whole thing where you two gang up on me.”

“We’re not ganging up on you,” Clara says, looking like she regrets even pretending to be affiliated with Lex for all of ten minutes. The first tremors of hurt rumble through Lex’s chest, but she ignores them, letting inky hatred seep in to fill the fractures. “Look, let’s just… take a step back. This is getting out of control, you guys need to cool off.”

“I’m cool,” Kara snaps. She looks at Lex, giving her a nasty look. “If you're going to be like this then I'm going home. I'll call you later when you're feeling marginally less bitchy.”

“Kara,” Clara says, looking distraught. “Come on.”

“No,” Kara says, unfolding her arms, apparently resolved. “I’m not going to sit here and try to take her seriously when she’s not going to be honest about what she’s mad about.”

Lex puts her hands in her pockets, chest hot with anger, expression rife with disgust. There’s something absolutely contemptible to her about all of this - having to put on this disguise and just _accept_ all these appeals to emotion she’s never had. Does all this _work_ on her alternate self? All this pouting and posturing, all these pointless platitudes? Kara’s thrown down the gauntlet of her vanishing from the Earth like the Other Lex would truly _care_ \- like the Other Lex hasn’t been taking every opportunity to make that a reality. Once more, Lex feels painfully constricted by the skin she’s in. It aches at the seams, far too tight, pulling and stretching at her sharpest angles.

“I think you’ll find I can be angry about many things at once,” she says. “And that I have very little patience for people announcing their intentions to leave without any follow through.”

Kara makes a disbelieving sound in the back of her throat.

“Y’know, Lex? Sometimes you really are your father's daughter.”

She turns so quick that her cape snaps in midair. Clara pauses for a second, glancing at Lex before she follows Kara out of the room, walking fast. Lex vaguely hears her say something about flying back with her, but can't make it out over the ringing in her ears.

It appears she may, in fact, give a damn.

The door doesn’t even get the chance to fall closed before Peace pokes her head in.

“Ma'am,” she says. “Cynthia told me to tell you the Ambassador's just landed at JFK.”

“Thank you,” Lex says, not meaning it in the slightest. She hears Lionel in her own voice, and by the time the door is closed, she has a hand grasping at her throat.

 _Shut up_ , she says, not sure who she means it for. She chokes him out of her, skin crawling. _Shut up._

* * *

 

Kara insists that they get they get above the clouds to avoid being seen from the ground. Clara agrees even though she knows the air will be thin and cold - really the only thing that could possibly make her head full of swirling garbage worse.

She's not sure how it's possible to feel so many contradicting things at the same time - angry, obviously, at both of them (Lex more than Kara, if only because Kara is an unknown quantity); dizzy and confused, which is becoming a constant; slightly giddy and sick from having spent the last twenty some odd minutes in the presence of another Kryptonian; and absolutely floored by how wrong this has all gone, and how quickly. This, she realizes, is why she's always so wary of finding herself on Team Lex, victim to her vicious antisocial whims. It means you sign up to take on every one of her fights as well as yours - Clara apparently forgot how much she likes to pick fights with damn near everyone. Picking fights is practically how Lex introduces herself. And she wants to act like Clara isn't doing anything useful... how about  _conflict resolution?_ That might well be her fulltime job while they're here.

All this, and she’s also tuning out the part of her brain that apparently only wants to think about how good Lex’s laughter sounds - deep and sensuous, absolutely electrifying. That little part of her brain is vibrating like a damn tuning fork, replaying the sound over and over, absolutely humming with it. It has Clara burning with humiliation, and a deep and fervent wish that she could stop thinking about it.

When was the last time she heard Lex laugh? _Really_ laugh? When exactly did Lex’s cruel, booming laughter and devilish grins start making a piece of her hum and tingle, as though every time it’s waking up from a long sleep in pins and needles, a jittery, giddy nightmare of low-level sensation?

 _Stop thinking about it,_ she tells herself. But where is she even supposed to begin? Stop thinking about what? About how Lex’s body fits perfectly against hers? About how the muscles of her back feel through her expensive clothes? About how every time she gets that look like she’s a cobra ready to sink her teeth in, it makes Clara’s heart race?

_Yes. All of that. Stop thinking about that._

She tries. In fact, she tries to stop thinking about all of it. She tries desperately to pull herself out of her own head but it’s like trying to pull her brain out through her nose, so eventually she settles for just sinking up to her neck in the mire of her own thoughts and following Kara through the cloud cover.

Kara, too, appears to be lost in thought. She’s been deadly quiet since they left the White House, whole body tight with an emotion she’s clearly fighting to contain. It’s intensely strange to be near her, very less in the guise of someone who ought to be used to it; used to seeing her move and speak, who doesn’t take in every tiny detail of her with a starving artist’s desperate awe. Clara can’t stop staring, can’t stop watching her as they fly. She’s never seen anyone talk to Lex like that - hell, _she’s_ never even talked to Lex like that. Lex always swings for the fences, striking at any inch of soul you bare. Clara’s never seen her go up against anyone who could do the same to her; drive a verbal knife into the meat of her insecurities like that. She’s been laboring under the impression that it couldn’t be done.

They’re in the sky over Maryland when Kara finally sighs and says the one thing Clara wasn’t expecting.

“I shouldn’t have said that.”

Clara blinks a little, flicking a bit of ice from her eyelashes.

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“I mean I shouldn’t have said that,” Kara says, and Clara can hear how heavy the guilt is in her voice. “That was… It was just out of line.”

“It’s not like it wasn’t true,” Clara says. She’d thought that when Kara said as much. The comparison isn’t particularly flattering, but it’s apt - she’d met Lionel Luthor more than a few times both incognito and out, and in Lex’s worst moments, Clara can’t deny the family resemblance. When Lex is at her most imperious and least reasonable, when she’s digging into someone’s pain and insecurities just to make them miserable and prove she’s the biggest, baddest thing in the room, Clara thinks of Lionel too. Hell, now more than ever - a man so obsessed with proving his own superiority that he had to lord it over a child.

But Kara shakes her head, giving her a look. “Don’t say that. Not to me, and definitely not to her. Don’t even think it. Ever.” She folds her arms, spinning in midair. She shakes her head, casting a gaze sunward. “It was a messed up thing to say.

“She just--” Kara reaches up and drags her hands through her hair, snarling. “God, she’s so _infuriating._ What the hell is her problem? Don’t answer that,” she tells Clara, as though she could even if she wanted to. “I know she’s pissed off about the whole thing with my father. I just - what does she expect me to do? _Not_ go?”

Clara fumbles, but only partially because she has no idea where, exactly, Kara would be going. Mostly she’s wondering who her father is supposed to be. Did the Kent's adopt Kara too? Or does she mean her Kryptonian father? That could only be one of the refugees. “You know how she is,” she ends up saying, and only because it worked so well the last time.

Like magic, Kara sighs, going from irritated to weary in the blink of an eye. “Yeah. I guess I do.”

She looks over at Clara, a guilty crease between her brows. “I'm sorry. I didn't really mean for you to see that.”

Clara shrugs, not sure what to say. “She would've picked a fight with anybody who walked through that door. You don't need to apologize.”

“I know. I knew I shouldn't have brought it up. We just…” She sighs, and the sound is oddly jagged. “Don't have a lot of time left. I don't know why I thought she'd own it.”

“Own what?”

Kara gives her a cryptic look out of the corner of her eye. “You, Kal. Getting involved in an active hostage situation.”

Clara feels that same jolt of offense from before. “That didn't have anything to do with her.”

“Come on, Kal.” Kara folds her arms as the wind whips her hair, like she’s done this flight so many times she doesn't even see the point in looking where she's going. “I know Lex has been stressed about this. You thought you were doing her a favor.”

“I honestly didn't,” Clara says, annoyed that she should have to convince her of the truth when every lie she's told in the last twenty minutes has gone over without a hitch. “I heard people in danger. I was just trying to help them. That's it.” And then, because she's doubly annoyed to be explaining herself a second time: “Is that a problem?”

“ _Pumpkin_ ,” Kara groans. “Of course it's not.”

“But you’re still questioning my motives.”

“I just don't want her pushing you into this. We don't have much longer on this planet. I want your last few months here to be… ideal. I don't want you thinking you need to run around saving everybody.”

_Their last few months here?_

Kara must see the unfettered confusion that blooms on Clara's face because she pauses. Frowns.

“Kal… you're not having second thoughts. Are you?”

“About what?” Clara asks, feeling dumb as a rock, scared to know the answer.

“About… leaving.”

“...DC?”

“ _Earth_ , Kal.”

Clara feels like she could fall out of the sky. Her stomach drops out, and her mouth falls open, and she glubs like a fish on dry land. Several unpleasant realities fall into place, and she's reeling.

The Kryptonians. Kara. Leaving. The six month deadline Zor-El mentioned.

“You are,” Kara says, and she sounds heartbroken. One look at her confirms all of Clara’s fears: her pretty face has sagged in, brow puckered with sadness and unpleasant surprise. Lizard brain moves too quickly for Clara to stop it. She can never bear to leave someone in pain when she has the power to change it.

So she says, “No! No, I’m not. I promise.”

She just has to _promise_. She can already hear Lex in the back of her brain, rattling off about what an idiot she is.

“I just…” Time to come up with a believable lie. Kara’s watching her, hanging on her words in a way that makes Clara incredibly nervous. “I don’t want to put my whole life on hold just because we might be leaving in six months.”

Kara sighs, but the hurt leaves her expression, which is a relief. She begins dropping out of the sky with the clear expectation Clara will follow her. They descend, the rolling emerald green of Pennsylvania’s forests opening up beneath them.

“I know. But that’s why I want you to be able to just… enjoy this time. I know you care about Lex.” They touch down on a rock at the top of a hill that gazes down into a hollow, surrounded by trees. “...I know I’ve done a rotten job of showing it, but I do, too.”

Clara is no expert in minefields, but she knows without a doubt that trying to talk about her so-called ‘feelings’ for Lex is one of them. “Maybe I just want to help people while I still have time. Maybe it’s just… I don’t know.” She feels her jaw tighten. “Who I am.”

Kara sighs again, and folds her arms. Clara watches her shift a little, clearly uneasy, cape swaying in the breeze. She’s perched on an outcropping of rock just a few feet above Clara, and her expression is troubled, but vague, like there’s something she wants to say but won’t.

“Kal… I don’t want to tell you what to do. I know that’s who you are. But I also know… there’s someone else who really needs your help right now. To… make this transition.”

It’s Clara’s turn to shift uncomfortably. Kara goes on, seeming to take this as a good sign.

“And I know, _obviously_ , I know, she’s not an easy person to help. It’s quite literally easier to go - I don’t know - clean up a hurricane, or slug a supervillain, or resolve a hostage situation then it is to help Lex Luthor. I know that. But she’s… You love her. And so do I. And…” A deep ache echoes in Kara’s expression that distracts Clara from the way that particular declaration makes her head spin. “...I can’t let you run away from that. Even if-- Look. Pumpkin. Do as I say, not as I do.”

“It’s really not about her,” Clara says, fruitlessly, in part because she’s starting to think that’s not entirely true after all.

“Okay,” Kara says. “Well, in that case then… We’ll talk about it. Later.” She glances over her shoulder, then back to Clara. “I’m going to go help my father with a few things at the settlement. You know, if you’re looking to just… step away from her for a while, get some air - we could actually use some help.”

“Yeah, I… talked to Zor-El. He mentioned that he’d like me to visit.”

“You did?” Kara asks, instantly lighting up. “He did? I-- You definitely should. It’s amazing, Kal, really. The vessel’s really coming together, it's incredible what they’ve been able to come up with in the time they’ve had. Mala’s been charting a few prospective locations for New Krypton that seem really promising.”

The very concept of a ‘new’ Krypton makes Clara feel a little dizzy, but she nods, trying not to let it show. Kara seems so excited, and she doesn’t want to bring her down. “Yeah, I’d love to see it.”

A smile flashes over Kara’s mouth and it’s dazzling even in its brevity. “Okay. Okay! Well. Good. Great.” She puts her hands on her hips, and sobers a little. “I’ll… stop by. Later. To apologize.”

Clara wrinkles her brow, confused. “You don’t want me to come with you right now?”

Kara shakes her head. “No. I want you to go back and check on Lex.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not ready to. And after what I just said…” Kara purses her lips. “Just trust me. She’s going to need you.”

Then, she hops from her rock down to Clara’s and wraps her arms around her in a tight hug. Clara ‘oofs’ quietly, trying to figure out what to do with the warmth that swoops through her chest, feeling like Kara’s squeezing her out of her facade. Before she can figure out if she’s hugging back right, Kara pulls back with a smile and bounces up to peck her forehead.

“Go,” she says, firmly. “Thanks for flying me back. Go help Lex. And quit trying to avoid her.”

“You mean like you’re about to do,” Clara says, disbelieving.

“As I say,” Kara says, jumping down to the grass. “Not as I do.”

Then, she whizzes away at superspeed, leaving Clara to wonder what the heck just happened.

* * *

 

Ambassador Al-Kandari is a younger man than Lex was expecting - plump-faced and thin-limbed, with a bushy beard around his chin that’s clearly intended to make him look a little more mature and isn’t succeeding. He has a slightly glazed look to his eye that might be jetlag but might very well be something else; Lex would be a fool not to notice that he flew directly out of Al-Qawiya. Queen Bee might as well have tied a damn letter to Al-Kandari’s leg - she’s clearly using him as a carrier pigeon.

And obviously Lex is no fool - what she is is… she wouldn’t say distracted, no. She’d say she’s fighting to hear her own thoughts over the noise of her racing heartbeat, fighting to keep her breath even. Her headache has returned and the bruise on her forehead pulses, dully. Her thoughts puddle together like crude oil, and Lionel moves under them like a shark trawling for blood.

“President Luthor,” Al-Kandari says, tipping forward slightly at the waist to take her by the hand. Lex allows it only insomuch that he knows the handshake alone is generous. She sees what wisps of a smile he’d gathered for the greeting leave him. He seems to understand he won’t be invited to sit.

“I believe I must extend to you, from my Queen and her Parliament, the very deepest apologies of my person and of the nation of Bialya.”

“Yes, I think that’d probably be a good start,” Lex agrees, teeth bared, hands in her pockets.

 _You sound like a child,_ Lionel scoffs in her ear, and she hears him with such perfect clarity that for a second, she could believe he’s standing right beside her, his hand on the back of her neck. She flinches, trying to get away from a man who isn’t there.

 _Never could control a negotiation_ , he sneers. _Too emotional. Too soft. You realize that, don’t you? Master your opponent or be mastered, Alexandra. Those are the only two choices._

 _Shut up_ , she tells him. She clenches her teeth, and her fists in her pockets. _Shut up. Shut up._

“Madam President,” Al-Kandari says. “Once your agents have returned these misguided souls to Bialyan custody, I can assure you, they will be punished to the greatest extent of the law.”

“I haven’t found myself impressed by the extent of Bialyan law today, Ambassador,” Lex sneers. “These women took American hostages on American soil. If you think for a second we’re going to turn them over to you, you’re dreaming.”

“Ma’am,” Al-Kandari says, a crease forming between his brows. “These are Bialyan women. They ought to face Bialyan justice.”

“The existence of Bialyan justice is theoretical at best,” Lex says. “You have no extradition treaty with the US, and even if you did, you wouldn’t have appropriate grounds for extradition.”

_Pathetic. Forty-seven thousand dollar vocabulary, but not an ounce of wit or imagination - education really is wasted on you, Lex. All that genius and you still can’t learn._

_Shut_ **_up._ **

Al-Kandari purses his lips. “Then, we have nothing to discuss.”

“Oh, on the contrary,” Lex snaps. “My security forces just captured six Bialyan nationals who took American citizens hostage at your embassy - we have _plenty_ to discuss.”

“I cannot speak to their motives,” Al-Kandari says, pushing out his chest.

Lex drives her nails into her own palm. “You can, and you’re going to.”

“Ma’am,” Al-Kandari says, “if you mean to imply that I am in league with these ruffians…”

 _Any man who questions you is a man who thinks he can oppose you_ , Lionel murmurs in the back of her brain, and her skin is crawling - his voice renders her drunk and dizzy with disgust. Bile climbs her esophagus, churning in her gut, panic rattling through her bones.

 _Get_ **_out._ **

Lionel’s hand on the back of her neck, sliding to her shoulder: _He thinks he can take you for a ride and live to tell the tale. He thinks you’re weak._

“Ambassador,” Lex says with venom she intends for Lionel. “Let me make something very clear to you, since you seem to be struggling with the basic concept: I have you by the balls, here. And I’m in a very bad mood. At this point, I would tread _very_ carefully, lest I give into temptation and decide to bring the hammer of American justice down on Bialya like the holy wrath of God all because you couldn’t figure out when it was time to stop screwing around and _grovel_.”

Al-Khandari swallows visibly.

_It’s the strong who rule this world, Lex - we crush the weak underfoot. Is that what you are, Lex? Weak? Delicate? A thing to be ruled? Because I promise, if you are, I’ll know, and so will they. They’ll know, and they’ll act on it, and you’ll have invited them to. You’ll deserve whatever happens to you, Lex, when you lose._

“You’re going to tell me what the Stone of Kidesh is,” Lex says through her teeth, nails biting into her palm, body vibrating with rage. “And you’re going to tell me why Queen Bee is so hellbent on getting it back. And then you’re going to share all of that information with the FBI and Homeland Security.”

 _Is that what you are, Lex? A_ **_loser_** _?_

“That information is classified,” Al-Khandari says, a defiant lilt to his voice. “I am forbidden to share it with you.”

_Because no child of mine is going to be--_

Lex steps closer to Al-Khandari, letting the full force of her temper billow from her skin. He wilts under the force of it, and she takes no pleasure in it.

Kara’s voice this time, shocking in its clarity: _Sometimes you really are--_

Lex snarls, cutting them both off. “You’re going to tell me, _now_ , or I’m going to give the order to the 82nd Airborne to render your Ambassadorship diplomatically _irrelevant_.”

Al-Khandari pales, and Lex sees in his eyes as common sense overtakes the lingering haze of Queen Bee’s thrall. She tries to take satisfaction in it, but she’s so far out of her body that it’s a relief to still be able to form words. She settles for Lionel and Kara’s voices vanishing beneath a white crush of mental static. Panic runs away with her, and rage takes up guns in the watchtower of her mind.

 _Shut up_ , the mantra. _Shut up, get out, shut up…_

* * *

 

“The Stone of Kidesh,” Nancy says, bringing it up on the monitor so that everyone around the table can see. For the moment, it’s only Lex, Nancy, Cynthia Ng, and Fitz in this room - Cynthia and Fitz both lean forward to take a look at it. Lex, who’s already seen it, stays in her chair, hand pressed to her forehead. Her headache has graduated from dull to splitting, and her heart’s beating so fast that she can barely feel the rest of her body. It thunders along like a runaway train over uneven tracks, careening along without her. She could shudder with the nausea that joins it; actually, she might _be_ shaking. She can’t tell. She feels absolutely, unequivocally sick.

Lex wouldn’t describe the Stone of Kidesh as much of a stone at all. It’s a sleek metal orb with two even protrusions along the sides and some sort of window at the center, showcasing a strange matrix of glossy red and black banding, like a geode. The metal itself is silver and waxy, as familiar to Lex as the sound of her own heartbeat, as foreign to Earth as Clara Kent.

“Apparently,” Nancy continues, in a proprietary sort of way, “the Bialyans recovered it from the Black Sea - they say centuries ago.”

“Try thirty-two years ago,” Lex says, not bothering to sit up or open her eyes. She spent the last year angling for this job, longing for the day when she would finally be in this room, and right now the only thing she wants is to leave.

“Why thirty-two?” Fitz asks. Lex can tell he’s looking at her.

“That’s when Superwoman landed,” she says. She’d like to lean into the drama of it all, but she doesn’t have the energy. “It’s clearly Kryptonian in origin. We can assume it came with her, one way the other.”

“It’s a favorite of Queen Bee’s,” Nancy says. “Al-Kandari says it’s a sacred object. Says she uses it in some kind of ritual to purge nonbelievers.”

“If this is some kind of Kryptonian technology, I think we have to assume that’s literal,” says Fitz.

“It’s Queen Bee,” Lex says, tipping her head up towards the ceiling. “That’s more than enough to assume it’s literal.”

“Is it...a weapon?” Cynthia asks, clearly not totally following all this.

“That seems the most likely,” Nancy says. “Allegedly, it went missing when the US delegation was there about three weeks ago.”

For that, Lex does crack an eye open. Nancy must have gotten that little tidbit from the FBI; Al-Kandari hadn’t mentioned it. “Three weeks ago and this is the first we’re hearing about it?”

“Could be they didn’t think it was us,” Fitz says.

Nancy nods, giving her a look that says she shares Lex’s suspicion. “Or they’ve been trying to recover it covertly - which would make sense if we’re talking about something powerful, or dangerous.”

“Or both,” says Fitz.

“Call me old-fashioned,” Lex says, “but I don’t consider sieging a US embassy to be particularly covert.”

“Is there any possibility that the perpetrators weren’t affiliated directly with Queen Bee?”

Lex joins Fitz and Nancy in turning to stare, incredulously, at Cynthia. Lex wishes that she’d at least have the decency to look embarrassed, but she remains totally stalwart, as though that were a serious suggestion, which, Lex supposes, with annoyance, is why she hired her in the first place, all those years ago.

“By my understanding, five of the six perpetrators were women,” Cynthia points out. “We know Queen Bee hasn’t managed to maintain as much control over the Bialyan public as she has over the Bialyan military. Maybe we’re looking at some sort of rogue faction here.”

This is not a totally insane proposition, though Lex finds herself wishing it were. She doesn’t need to get any more involved in this than she already is, and she’s annoyed by the idea of Cynthia offering anything useful to these proceedings. Her head throbs, and she winces, closing her eyes again and applying her fingers to it with greater force.

“I’ll put the boys on it,” Fitz says, without Lex having to ask. As soon as she gets home, she thinks, she’s finding him and hiring him. Hell, he and Nancy are the only two people she’s met so far that she hasn’t considered including in her purge of the West Wing. Really, it’s astonishing that a White House with so many idiots roaming the halls could manage to employ not one but _two_ perfectly competent people. “If that’s true, it’d explain a few things.”

“Let me be clear: I’m not interested in getting involved in anyone else’s civil war,” Lex says through her teeth. God, when will this stupid meeting be over? She’s tempted to just get up and walk out right now. They’ll handle this, surely.

“We still haven’t located the stone,” Nancy points out. “Wherever it is, we don’t have it.”

“See that we do,” Lex tells her. “Preferably sometime before this all goes to hell.”

“Yes, ma’am,” says Nancy.

“Lex,” Cynthia says, and her voice is nails on a chalkboard. “Is your head still bothering you?”

She could kill her. She could goddamn kill her - in fact, she was about to, wasn't she? When Clara Kent, demigod on high, swooped in and soiled it. But for the grace of Clara Kent goes Cynthia Ng, the incompetent egotist. Ah, yes, how she must be relishing in Lex's suffering right about now. Well, two can play at that game. Lex's body may be failing her at the moment, but her mind is as keen as ever, and she has no intention of allowing Cynthia Ng of all people to capitalize on what might appear, to the untrained eye, to be a moment of weakness.

Lex snarls at her, leaning back in her chair. Her head is pounding. “Brilliant deduction, Cynthia,” she snaps. “I see you’re putting that medical degree to good use. Was it the bruise, the hand, or the wincing that gave it away? No, no, don’t tell me - I’d hate to feel intimidated by the breadth of your intellect.”

She doesn’t have to look to see Cynthia go rigid in her chair. This is what she always did when Lex would insult her in the boardroom - go motionless, blank-faced, as though Lex is a creature who can be fooled into ignoring any prey smart enough to stay still.

“Maybe we should end for today,” she suggests in a small voice, void of feeling.

“I’m going back to the residence,” Lex says, before Cynthia can feign pity and embarrass them both. She stands up, and so does everyone else in the room - her ever-present panic lurches in her chest, but she feels a ghost of satisfaction, watching them all leap to attention. Standing gives her vertigo, but she doesn’t let it show on her face.

“Yes, ma’am,” says Fitz. And then, without being invited, he says, “Take care of yourself, ma’am.”

She almost snaps at him - it’s a near thing. Who the hell does he think he is? _Take care of herself?_ Do they think this is endearing, somehow? Is the Other Lex the sort of person who allows such flagrant shows of disrespect, such careless question of her authority? Do they think she's that weak? Something inside her snarls, snaps its jaws, bears its teeth. She lets the looks she gives him suffice, and tugs her jacket straight.

“Tell me when you have something,” she says, as curtly as they deserve. She walks out without sparing any of them a backwards glance.

* * *

 

Walking down the hall feels like wading through a wet Dali painting - her heels click along the floor and people nod to her as she passes, but she can't make out their faces. Lex squints, presses her hand to her head. She's in so much pain she could vomit. Her heart is still racing - head still whirling. It's only thanks to her eidetic memory that she's able to remember the way to go. Every corridor feels like one she’s never been down before, regardless of whether or not she has been. Nothing is familiar to her. She's battered by a one-woman storm, a hurricane assault on the senses, a tornado that encircles only her, sipping the breath from her lungs.

She needs to calm down, she tells herself. She can't breathe, can barely see. She needs-- she's not sure what she needs. A gun in one hand and a full snifter in the other. It's been so long since she's felt like this that she barely knows what to do about it.

She knows what she'd do if she were home, of course. In LexCorp Tower West's fourth basement floor, she has a firing range that she built just for this - moments when her bones rattle and twitch beneath her skin, shaking so hard they threaten to loosen her teeth. Moments when she’s so dizzy with panic that she feels seasick, when she's blind and dangerous with it. It's a close alternative to homicide. Just her, the gun, and the target. Her whole world framed in the sight, her whole world narrowed down to a simple action and reaction. Point. Aim. Shoot.

God, she thinks, throwing open the door from the Oval Office, walking up the path towards the residence. She longs for Metropolis. She's had so little occasion for homesickness in her life that the feeling is absolutely alien to her - like a transplant for an organ she doesn't have.

Yet still, her whole body aches for somewhere familiar - her own apartment with her own staff and her own life. She wants to run. She wants to be anywhere other than walking down this path in a body and through a life that looks very much like hers but isn’t. She wants to draw Lionel like a poison out of her blood.

God, who do they think they are? Fitz, Cynthia, the whole lot of them - _take care of yourself_ , as though she isn’t fully capable. Who the hell do they think they’re talking to? As though she hasn’t spent the better part of her entire life taking care of herself, as though she weren’t the damn President of the United States. That’s not even mentioning Peace, the little incompetent, or _Kara_ , that miserable brute. Is the Other Lex so docile and tame that every member of her administration feels entitled to try their hand at mastering her, the way two Kryptonians have already tried and failed to do?

As though she’d ever in her life allow anyone that sort of power over her again.

The thought alone makes her stomach lurch so violently that she almost vomits. She catches herself, stock still, rigid, fist curled so tight it’s shaking. Bugs are crawling under her skin, behind the sockets of her eyes, along the spongy surface of her brain. She shudders, sick with panic and self-disgust. She has to get this under control.

_Sometimes you really are--_

She **has** to get this under control.

She walks towards the South Portico, and the guards push open the doors for her. One of them looks at her askance, and she stuffs her hands back into her pockets and thinks of murder.


	4. First, Do No Harm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clara reflects on what Kara told her, and realizes Lex might need more help than she first realized. Everything instantly gets a whole lot gayer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tws for this chapter: some refs to hurt animals; knifeplay(?); a panic attack. Surprisingly tame, by my standards! I doubt that'll last...

The fox is a menace, no two ways about it. Clara’s only eleven, but even she knows that. It's been to every henhouse in a six mile radius, the cunning little thing - it gobbled up every last one of Mrs. Thomas’ new batch of chicks before Clara even got the chance to see them. Mrs. Thomas got a little teary about it the last time she was over. Dogs are no deterrent; it got past Mr. Carnegie's pair of blue tick hounds and Mrs. Baxter's pack of mutts with no trouble at all. It even manages to avoid the traps, the wet cat food mixed with rat poison - several skunks and possums aren't nearly so lucky.

But if the Kent family cows know anything when they see it, it's trouble. And that, more likely than not, is how Clara ends up stumbling on the fox at four-thirty on a Monday morning, bloody and bedraggled, dragging itself through the mud towards their barn. She runs inside for Joan without a second thought, and they manage to corner it before it can get far.

It's stunningly beautiful, even as it hisses and snarls, a wild look in its eye. Its fur is the color of a maple leaf in fall, its eyes glinting gold, its graceful legs all tapered black. One of its back legs is slumped beneath it at an unnatural angle, a large, hoof-shaped divet along its hip - Dollie's work, no doubt. Clara can tell by the way she's peering over the fence, trying to get a good look. She huffs as Clara passes, as though to say, _Serves you right._ The fox snarls, whipping its tail as Clara draws near, teeth bared, ears flat to its head.

“I don't know, hon,” Joan says. “Might be better to put her out of her misery.”

Clara's heart takes off like a pheasant out of the underbrush. “No, Ma, please. Come on, she’s hurt. We have to help her.”

“That thing has eaten every chicken farmer this side of the county out of house and home. Maybe this is nature taking its course.”

“Ma…!” Clara gasps, a little choked up. She can never stand to see anything in pain; it makes her whole body ache. She can't bear the thought of simply letting an animal die for the sake of balancing some cosmic ledger. “It's hurt, please.”

Joan sighs and puts her hands on her hips. At their feet, the fox makes a guttural, pained noise, shuddering a little with either pain or terror, and Clara sees her make her mind up right then.

“Alright,” Joan says, and then she shakes her head and sighs. “Alright, alright, go get a dish towel from the kitchen. Hurry now, before I change my mind.”

Clara goes, whipping across the yard and back at a dizzying speed. Dish towel in hand, she watches Joan circle slowly around the fox. It flattens itself to the ground, shoulders pinched up along its ears, mouth open, sharp teeth glinting. Joan leans slowly towards it and it turns, snake like, and snaps its teeth at her fingers, missing by inches. Clara gasps before she can keep it in.

“Easy,” Joan says. “Easy.”

She leans forward again and the fox shrieks and snarls, lashing at her.

“Why's it doing that?” Clara asks. “How come it's trying to hurt you? We're just trying to help.”

“Sometimes, Clara Jo, the folks that need help the most want it the least. Come here around the side,” Joan tells her. “And don't let it run.”

Clara does as she’s told.

“How it happens is folks get hurt and they get scared - folks and critters both - and then they get scared that anyone what comes near ‘em is gonna hurt ‘em worse. So they get mean - yes, just like you, you nasty little thing,” Joan says to the fox as it lashes at her boots, teeth glancing off the thick leather. She says it in the disapproving affectionate tone she generally reserves for the barnyard cats. “And you can leave ‘em, you have that right. But if you feel obliged to help ‘em, sometimes you've gotta get a little creative. Take that towel now, and put it over her head. Gently. And be careful, she'll bite just about anyone who gets close right about now.”

Clara leans in, levering her arm over the fox to slowly lower the curtain of the dishtowel. The fox’s elegant head darts back and forth, looking for the opportunity to bite or bolt. As Clara drapes the towel over its head it freezes. Clara sees it move to look around, but the rest of its body stays still.

“Alright,” Joan says, her voice soft and low. “Good. Now come a little closer - gently, you’re gonna put one hand between her shoulders and one hand over her ears. You hold that towel on over her eyes, that’ll help her stay calm.”

Clara nods and slowly moves forward, and Joan coaches her: “Put your knees on either side of her - yup, attaway. Be real gentle, punkin, she might fight you. She starts to struggle, I want you to get right up. Don’t want you gettin’ bit.”

She settles down astride the fox. It’s much smaller than it looked a second ago, and as she places one hand on its shoulders, the other over its ears, she can feel its pulse through its hot skin. It’s fur is so downy soft that she can’t help but pet it. She can feel it breathing, hear it panting open-mouthed beneath her. Joan comes up alongside her and kneels down to examine its leg. As she extends it, ever so gently, the fox makes a piteous whimper, and shudders.

“She’s shaking,” Clara says.

“Yup,” Joan nods, sounding grave. “We’re gonna need to splint this. Dollie got her good.” Then, no doubt compelled by the same thing that compels Clara, she reaches out and strokes the fox with a gentle, steadying hand.

“You’re alright,” she murmurs. “You’re going to be alright, if we have anything to say about it.”

Then, she gives Clara a comforting smile, squeezes her shoulder, and walks into the barn to get supplies.

They keep the fox in the barn in an old dog crate Joan digs out of the attic. Martha makes her a cone out of cardstock so she won’t chew her splint, and Clara brings her scraps from the kitchen four times a day. The fox snarls and bristles every time she lays eyes on a single one of them, and refuses to warm to them no matter how much time Clara wastes lying around the barn with her.

“I don’t get it,” Clara says, picking at her dinner one night. She’s been feeling blue about it all day. “We saved her life, you think she’d be grateful.”

“Now don’t you start with that,” Joan says, still chewing. “She doesn’t owe us anything. We helped ‘cuz we felt obliged.”

“But she should be happy,” Clara says.

“Maybe she is,” Joan says. “Can’t always predict how someone’s going to react to help, Clara Jo. You help folks what need it, and the rest is up to them. If they’re healthy enough to tell you to take a hike - well, then they’re healthy, aren’t they?” She wipes her hands on a napkin and reaches across the table to take Clara’s hand. “Sometimes, you’re gonna have to let having helped be its own reward. You’re gonna have to just take stock in knowing that you did good by them, even if they can’t see it.”

Clara thinks about this. She thinks about it all that night and through the next day, and for the next week. She keeps thinking about it until the fox is fully healed, and through the drive out to Cheyenne Bottoms Refuge. She carries the crate out of the car and a ways from the road, out into the marsh grass, Joan and Martha watching over her from the car.

“Plenty of birds out here,” Clara tells the fox. “Way better than chickens.”

She sets the crate down and carefully unlatches the door, leaving it open and taking a few steps back. She waits - the fox stays very still for a few minutes, so long in fact that Clara’s thinking about shaking her out. But then just as Clara’s about to try it, the fox darts forward in a streak of vermillion. She’s there, and then she’s not. Clara swallows her disappointment, closes the crate, and lugs it back to the car.

Joan reaches out and squeezes her shoulder, helping her put the crate into the back of the car. Clara sees her mouth open, and she can already hear the comforting wisdom she’s about to dispense when suddenly they’re interrupted by Martha gasping and pointing behind her.

“Oh, Clara, look!”

Clara turns her head to see where she’s pointing. There, in the distance, stands the fox, just barely visible through the tall thick stalks of grass. Her ears are pricked forward, and she’s posed as elegantly as a statue, staring right at them. She stands there for a while, looking at them while they look back. And then, with a flippant swish of her bushy tail, she trots back out of sight, and disappears into the marsh grass.

* * *

 

Clara lands on the Truman Balcony with requisite hesitation - there has to be a specific way she’s supposed to do it, some kind of protocol, but she can’t for the life of her divine what it might be. The guards posted by the door seem utterly unphased as she touches down, but she waves anyway. They don’t wave back, which she could have anticipated. She sighs and stuffs her hands into her pockets, and heads through the closest set of doors, trying not to make eye contact with either the guards or the window of the Lincoln bedroom, which stands expectantly open, watching her go.

She took her time heading back from her meeting with Kara. She doesn’t usually like to stay in the air too much longer than absolutely necessary - she’s never really been able to shake her fear of heights - but she’d rested on her back, gazing up at the clouds, watching them roll across the sky like ocean waves, trying to process what on earth just happened.

She’s been waiting her whole life to meet another Kryptonian. Ever since Joan had walked her slowly down the wooden cellar steps and showed her the ship that brought her here, ever since the AI that looked like Jor-El had called her ‘son’ and spooked her almost all the way out of her skin, she’s been longing to meet another living, breathing Kryptonian. Really, she thinks, it’s just an extension of that age-old longing for siblings - a desire to have someone else to talk to, to feel the same way she does, to share her life with. Someone who looks like her, who talks like her, someone who would share her powers and the great burden of responsibility, the obligation to help that oftentimes overwhelms her, the profound powerless she feels in the face of others’ suffering. Kara is the answer to Clara’s most fervent and childish wish. And Clara doesn’t know how to totally accept her existence.

Well, she thinks, if she's realistic, she doesn’t have to. Kara doesn’t exist, not in her universe; as soon as she leaves, she’ll disappear as abruptly as she appeared, and more than likely Clara will never see her again. But in lieu of sitting with the pain of that realization, Clara opts to focus on the here and now: the other Kryptonians, among them Kara’s _father_ , and the six month deadline. It won’t take her and Lex six months to get out of here, will it? She hadn’t known what to say when Kara brought it up. If Kal had agreed to go with her when she left the planet, who is Clara to deny either of them that? She doesn’t exactly know what Alternate Her is thinking, but the last thing she wants to do is ruin her plans by enforcing what _she_ wants in Kal’s stead.

But… leaving the planet? Kal’s really alright with that? _Kara’s_ really alright with that?

It’s different here, Clara tells herself. Who knows if Kara and Kal even have human parents? Maybe they were never adopted by the Kents at all. (This thought is so immensely painful and unnerving Clara can’t think it for long. It feels sacreligious to imagine anyone but her parents as… well. Her parents. It makes her heart feel like it’s being crushed in her chest. What if Kal’s Mom isn’t her Mom, or her Ma isn’t her Ma?) Maybe they landed when Kara was old enough to raise Kal on her own - it certainly seems like they have that sort of relationship, or at least that of an older and younger sister. Clara obviously doesn’t have extensive experience with siblings, but only Joan ever calls her ‘pumpkin.’

Maybe Kara and Kal don’t think of themselves as human. Maybe they never did.

Clara had stared up at the clouds thinking that, hoping a storm might roll in overhead, just to set the appropriate mood. But the clouds had remained soft and bright white, gleaming in the sunlight, the blue sky behind them enduringly pleasant. The breeze had remained stubbornly warm and sweet smelling. Finally, she’d had to face the music and head back, all the while wishing she could do just about anything else.

She’d followed Lex’s heartbeat out of habit - it’s alarmingly fast, a striking rapid staccato. She’d peered ahead, trying to see what was prompting it, but nothing had seemed out of the ordinary (excepting the obvious), so she’d fought back her urge to hurry back. She doesn’t care, she tells herself. She’s not worried about it. That’s why she’s walking at a completely normal, human pace towards the frantic sound of Lex’s heartbeat, and why she’s not running through a list of possible worst case scenarios, and why she’s not clenching her hands tight in her pockets. It’s because of how very, deeply not at all worried about it she is.

She walks through the private sitting room and out into the hall, only to find the kitchen staff occupying the West Sitting Hall, looking distinctly nervous.

That doesn’t bode well.

The thick double doors to the kitchen are closed, and the three chefs who probably ought to be preparing dinner are standing outside, arms folded, still in uniform. The executive chef looks especially grumpy, and turns to Clara like she’s been expecting her.

“Hey,” Clara says, lifting a hand. “She’s in there?”

“She’s currently hard at work mangling my cutlery,” the executive chef says. “She caught us right in the middle of prep - if she wants to eat sometime in the next three hours, you need to get her the hell out of here.”

Clara sighs, trying not to feel annoyed. Somehow, against all odds, in the last twenty-four hours she’s become Lex Luthor’s keeper, and she’s not finding that task particularly rewarding. But she doesn’t have the energy to fight it, and the chefs all look like they’ve been through enough without her telling them to call in someone else.

So instead, she says, “Alright. Thanks,” and heads in. She opens the doors with more confidence than she really feels, and closes them to avoid finding herself with an audience.

The kitchen is in slightly more disarray than Clara imagines it usually is - several cutting boards stand unmanned on the chrome countertops, each holding a mosaic of meat or vegetables mid-preparation. Pots stand on the stove, all of which - thankfully - are turned off, though it’s clear whoever attended to that had to leave in a hurry. The reason for that instantly makes itself apparent: as Clara steps into the room, a silver blade comes singing through the air, missing her by inches as it sails past her to land with a _chunk_ in the wall.

Clara follows the knife’s path back to its source and finds Lex twirling another between her fingers with a frightening grace.

“Lex?”

“How nice of you to finally join us,” Lex says, not bothering to look at her. She hefts the knife up by its handle and hurls it - Clara jerks back as it zips past her, pegging the wall directly beside the last.

She looks bad. Clara doesn’t have to be an expert to know that - and she is. Even if she couldn’t hear Lex's machine gun heartbeat, even if she hadn't just watched her hurl a knife into the wall, she’d be able to see pending disaster scrawled across her face. She’s shucked her blazer without even bothering to hang it up; it’s on the table, looking like a strip of shed skin. Her white button-down is startlingly low cut to accommodate the cut of the blazer, and Clara can see how fast and shallow she’s breathing by how quickly her chest rises and falls. There’s a slightly crazed look in her eyes, a sick gleam, and Clara’s vaguely reminded of how she looked in LexCorp Plaza - desperate and dangerous.

Lex stinks of panic.

“What are you doing?” Clara asks.

“I’d hope that was obvious,” Lex sneers.

“What happened?”

“Nothing,” Lex says. She grabs another knife from the block beside her - she must’ve moved it from somewhere else in the room. It looks out of place where it is, same as her. Clara watches her take aim, straightening her stance - she hurls it, and it lands with a _thunk_. The wall is a pincushion; Clara counts no fewer than seven knives in the wood already, and countless more holes besides, some much deeper than others. Lex has clearly been at this for a while. Clara quietly regrets taking her time.

“You met with the Ambassador?”

“I did,” Lex says. Her voice shudders ever so slightly, like she’s having to fight to even _sound_ calm.

“Did it go…”

“It went swimmingly,” Lex snaps, whipping another knife into the wall. “We know what the Stone of Kiddesh is, and in typical fashion, we have the grand legacy of Krypton to thank for the further ruination of mankind.”

“How is this--” _my fault?_ Clara shakes her head, sighs. _No_ , she tells herself, _you know better. Don’t go down this road with her, don’t let her bait you._ “Whatever. I’m sure you’ll tell me ad nauseam.” Lex hurls another knife and Clara purses her lips. “Is there a reason you’re in the White House kitchen throwing knives at the wall?”

“Oh, no reason at all,” Lex says. “Is there a reason you’re here and not gallivanting around with your own kind?”

 _Her own kind_. Clara struggles not to reel with disgust. Jiminy Christmas, she hates that - she can't even articulate why. Lex talks about her sometimes like she’s some kind of rare, exotic variety of insect that belongs more in the untamed wilds of Sumatra than anywhere approaching human civilization. Why does it bother her so much, Clara wonders, to be treated like an alien? Like she doesn't belong? Logically, she supposes she doesn't. She _is_ an alien after all. She's as Kryptonian as Kara is. And yet, she thinks, there's nothing she detests more, nothing that hurts quite like Lex reminding her that she isn't human. That she doesn't belong here and she never will. Maybe she _is_ an alien, but Lex is the only person on earth who makes her truly _feel_ like one.

She grits her teeth and sighs. She's not taking the bait this time. Lex's tongue is just another knife for her to throw at anything unfortunate enough to get close.

“What happened?” Clara asks again.

“ _Absolutely nothing,_ ” Lex hisses, venomous and puffed up as a cobra.

Clara sucks her cheek between her teeth, hands pressing deep into her pockets. It's not nothing, she knows that much. She doesn't get it. Lex seemed fine when she left - ticked off and cagey, sure, but really, when isn't she? Lex's emotional default seems to be ‘pulsating with latent rage, ready to start a fight with anyone over anything, no matter how petty.’ If it wasn’t the meeting with the Ambassador…

Then she pauses, and thinks of Kara; the guilt that weighed her words and her expression.

“...is it what Kara said?”

“ _No,_ ” Lex snaps, tone utterly savage, a grimace-like grin painting her mouth. She's so instantly defensive that it couldn’t possibly be anything else.

Clara ponders this. She'd been surprised at the intensity of Kara's guilt, before. What had she said? Something about Lex being just like her father - nothing that nasty or untrue in Clara's opinion. But Kara had acted like it was something much worse than a simple insult - and now, Clara can see that, as innocuous as it seemed to her, she was right. Lex is right on the edge of a full-blown meltdown: breath unsteady, pulse wild, mood erratic and unstable. She's throwing knives at the wall, for Pete's sake. She looks like she's ready to crawl out of her own skin.

Lex is taking this as badly as losing the election, as badly as being ousted from her own company. What Clara can't understand is _why._

And then, all at once - the deposition comes back to her, and she feels a tug of that same guilt she saw on Kara. Her skin prickles with unease.

“Are you okay?” she asks, although the answer is obvious.

“Shut up,” Lex spits, brandishing the third to last knife in the block. “Shut the hell up - don't you _dare_ speak to me that way you-- _ignoramus_.” It seems as though her words are rattling around in her head, only barely managing to make it through the slot of her teeth. That’s her least creative insult all afternoon. “I don't need your help, and I certainly don't need your _pity_.” She says the word with such contempt, Clara's surprised it doesn't curdle the cream left out on the counter.

Clara watches her, shaking her head a little. “I don't pity you, Lex.”

This isn't exactly true - she does pity Lex, in a way. A little. But that pity isn't without reservations. And she's pretty sure that's what Lex means. She doesn't think Lex is weak or defenseless, she never has. She accepts... whatever it is she's feeling right now. Even if they aren't friends. Even if she doesn't really get it.

Across from her, Lex pauses. She doesn't lower the knife, but Clara sees as the intent goes out of her. She doesn't seem to know how to process what Clara's just said. She narrows her eyes, shifts a little in her stance. Her shoulders relax, but rather than looking calm, she just looks like she's trying to come up with something else they can fight about.

“You realize I can wonder how you’re doing without pitying you, right?”

Lex scoffs, voice boiling with sarcasm. “Oh, of course. You’re usually _so_ attentive to my wellbeing, I should know better than to assume an ulterior motive.”

Clara swallows thickly and purses her lips. Alright. So maybe Lex has a bit of a point. That doesn’t change the fact that she’s asking now, and that at least some part of her cares about the answer.

“So what’s your plan, exactly?” she asks. “Keep throwing knives until you hit cement?”

“That or you,” Lex sneers, showing her teeth.

Clara frowns a little deeper, somewhere between annoyed and legitimately worried. She doesn’t understand how the hell she’s supposed to help Lex when she acts like this - although for the first time in a long time, she _is_ actually convinced that Lex might really _need_ help. She can hear it in her heartbeat, see it in the way she moves.

Maybe Kara was right. Maybe that really _was_ a cruel thing to say, worse than Clara can really understand. Sure, it wasn’t flattering, and maybe it wasn’t _kind._ But maybe… Maybe this goes a lot farther than Clara can understand, having parents like Joan and Martha, instead of parents like Lionel Luthor.

What she really doesn’t understand is how, exactly, she’s supposed to resolve this. They can’t just stand in the White House kitchen throwing knives around. At some point, the kitchen staff are going to get someone important involved; someone who’s going to have questions. Clara doesn’t know how to explain this if someone asks, outside of chalking it up to a serious mental break. And besides that, leaving Lex in a sustained state of panic is a great way to end up on the business end of something a lot more deadly than a knife. But what is she supposed to do, wrap her up in a tarp and carry her out of here? Heck, what kind of person can’t even take a ‘how are you?’ the way that it’s intended? How is she supposed to help a person with Lex’s disposition and her desire to cause pain?

...well, she thinks, actually, there’s a clear and simple solution to that. She doesn’t love it, but she doesn’t really have any other ideas. So, with a sigh, she steps away from the door, and directly into Lex’s path.

“Alright,” she says. “Fine. Go for it, if it’s gonna make you feel better.”

It’s hard to say which emotion crosses Lex’s face first: shock? Offense? The vaguest dash of horror and dismay? (That honestly comes as a surprise.) Excitement? (That doesn’t.) She stands very still, like she thinks Clara’s playing a joke on her.

“Excuse me?” she says, slowly.

“I said go for it.” Clara takes her hands out of her pockets and lets them rest at her sides. “Hit me.”

She should know from experience that Lex’s requisite hesitation won’t last. But there’s still something unbelievable about how quickly she transitions from surprised to resolved to hurl a knife at another living being - it’s not healthy, Clara knows that much for damn sure. Lex looks at her, _really_ looks, with that weird intensity of hers, and then she takes her stance and throws, so fast it’s like she thinks the offer has a limited shelf life. The knife sails towards Clara in an unbroken arc and collides with her shoulder, shearing through her blazer and her shirt, hitting her skin with such force that it almost _does_ hurt. It anchors on the fabric for a second, and then clatters unceremoniously to the floor, the point of the blade blunted like it’s been flattened by a hammer.

“I don't think the chefs are gonna like that.”

“Shut up,” Lex suggests, and Clara looks up at the sound of her drawing another knife from the block. This one, she aims directly at the center of her chest - it strikes hard enough to push a bit of air from her mouth, cleaving through one of her buttons. Clara stands still and lets it clang to the floor.

“If you really wanted to make this interesting,” Lex says, “you’d dodge.”

“You seriously think you can hit me if I'm dodging?” Clara asks.

Lex grins - that devilish little grin of hers where her lower lip snags on her teeth - and says nothing. Her heart is still beating like hummingbird wings.

 _Fine_ , thinks Clara, with a huff that might be laughter. This is absurd, but it's better than nothing. She turns, walks back to the wall, and pulls the knives Lex has already thrown out one by one. She tosses them to the floor at Lex's feet, where they clang and skid across the terra cotta tile. Then, she steps back, puts her hands back in her pockets and rolls her shoulders. _Come get me, then_.

Lex kneels and chooses her weapon, hefting it a little, testing its weight. Then, she takes her stance as Clara stares her down - for a moment, the whole room is still. The buzz of the overhead lights seems very loud in Clara’s ears. Then, Lex moves, snapping forward. Clara tips her head just so, and the knife goes sailing past her into the wood. It doesn't even ruffle her hair.

Clara gives Lex a daring look, shifting her shoulders. Lex's smirk widens, in a not-particularly-friendly sort of way. She selects her next blade.

This one comes for Clara's stomach. Clara whips aside, bending slightly at the waist. The knife _thunks_ back into the wall. The next comes for Clara's shoulder again. She steps back in a pivot, and it misses by a country mile.

“You done?” she asks.

“Not even close,” Lex purrs.

The next barely misses her arm - she has to jerk her hand out of her pocket to avoid it. After that, she's ready - she sidesteps one, then the other, then neatly spins out of the way of the next.

“I really like this better when you have a gun,” Clara says, unable to resist the temptation to egg her on. “Gets it over with a lot quicker.”

She has to throw her head back to avoid the next one.

By the time she recovers Lex has her final knife prepared - strange, Clara thinks, she could've sworn there were more. She takes aim and chucks it at Clara’s chest. Clara huffs a little, bending out of the way. She's thinking how damn predictable she is when a second projectile, coming almost at the same time as the first, catches her out of the corner of her eye. She puts on a quick burst of speed, and jerks her head out of the way just in time. The blade hums as it passes her, so close that it clips the lobe of her ear.

When she gets her balance back, she finds Lex looking _immensely_ satisfied. Clara reaches up and rubs her ear - its fine, of course, as unblemished as ever, but she feels the ghostly itch of injuries that should’ve been, like her invulnerable skin knows it really shouldn’t be. She glances at the knife block and finds it empty. Lex stands a little looser, but her heart still hammers along. Clara watches her, trying to take her in.

“How about now?” she asks.

Lex tips her head like she’s thinking. She shrugs a little.

Clara pushes her tongue against her cheek and makes a gamble.

“Hey,” she says. “We tried it your way. Let’s try something else.”

Lex cocks an eyebrow, but Clara’s not giving her a chance to talk her way out of this - she crosses the room towards her. The reaction is instant: Lex bristles, backing up against the chrome countertop, body going taut, like she’s preparing to ward off an attack.

“What are you doing?” she asks, all teeth once more.

“Relax,” Clara says. Lex doesn’t move, clearly intent on doing no such thing. Clara sighs and raises her hands in surrender. “ _H_ _umor me._ Please.”

It seems to be the ‘please’ that hooks it’s fingers under Lex’s guard. She blinks a little, expression still guarded and wary. She sizes Clara up like she’s trying to guess what her game is, and turns her head just so. She’s listening.

Clara seizes her opportunity, knowing she won’t get another one. “I need to touch you.”

“Why?” she asks, slowly.

“Lex...”

“ _Why?_ ”

“Because I want you to be able to feel what I’m doing. It’s going to help if we have body-to-body contact.” Clara does this with disaster victims all the time - she learned it from Diana, and it’s been an invaluable technique for when she needs to get someone in a panic calm enough to fly them away from danger. She’s not going to tell Lex that; she has a feeling Lex would find breathing techniques pedestrian, and the implication insulting.

“Body-to-body contact,” Lex repeats.

“Yeah, Lex. Can you handle that?”

Lex’s nostrils flare. “ _Yes._ ”

Sometimes it’s a relief that Lex is so damn predictable. She's so contrary, a double dog dare gets her as easily as it would a second grader.

Clara reaches out and clasps Lex’s shoulders - she feels her start at her touch, flinching, and it rattles her a little. She purses her lips. Lex is _shaking_ , and Clara isn’t sure when that started, or if it’s been happening since before she even walked into the room. Her body is shockingly cold to the touch, and Clara fights the urge to rub a comforting hand along her arm. Instead, she tries to anchor her, weigh her down.

“I need you to breathe with me,” Clara says.

Lex scoffs. “Unbelievable.”

“Alright,” Clara says, “if you don’t think you can--”

“If I don’t think I _can?_ ” Lex sneers. “As though it’s _difficult?_ ”

She says it like she hasn’t been almost _panting_ for the better part of -- what? An hour? Guilt forks through Clara’s chest like lightning. She tries to ignore it, focuses on guiding the exercise. She inhales deeply into her belly and waits for Lex to follow her lead. There’s a second’s delay, but she does. She takes in a deep breath - holds, the way Clara does, and lets it out with a shudder Clara feels all the way up her arms.

Clara doesn’t speak - she knows better. She coaches her silently, having to trust that Lex will follow. _In, breathing from the stomach_. _Hold it. Stay with me. Now out, slowly._ At some point fairly early on, Lex closes her eyes. Clara feels in her body as the dizziness hits - as the adrenaline starts to retreat and the diaphragm starts to take over.

She counts to one hundred, listening to Lex’s heartbeat as it hitches, jerks, shudders, then finally slows. When she finally relaxes and lets go it takes a second for Lex to come back to herself. She looks tired. Clara realizes she’s been rubbing her thumbs slowly along her biceps, giving comfort without meaning to. She swallows, a little embarrassed.

“Better?” she asks.

Lex stares down at the floor for a second, not saying a thing. Finally, she closes her eyes again and reaches up and presses her fingers to her forehead. The bruise from this morning is healing, but Clara can still see it through her makeup.

Clara sighs, looking around the room. She picks the block up off the table next to Lex and walks over to the wall, pulling the knives out and plucking them off the floor. She slips most of them back into place, and picks up the ones that have bent out of shape.

“Where does this go?”

Lex points vaguely in the direction of the opposite counter. Clara looks around until she finds a spot on the station that looks unnaturally bare. By the time she turns back, Lex has left her place at the other end of the kitchen and opened one of the doors. The kitchen staff jump back, clearly eavesdropping. Lex walks past them without a word.

Clara grabs Lex’s jacket off the counter and follows her at a distance. As she passes the executive chef, she mutters a quick apology. Then, a thought occurs to her.

“Could we skip the big production tonight? I think she just needs something quick to eat. Would you mind whipping up something simple and bringing it to her room? And some water? It’s been a long day.”

The executive chef gives her a look like she’d rather strangle Lex with her cravat, but she nods. Clara thanks her profusely - though, if the woman's expression is any metric, not nearly profusely enough - and hurries down the hall.

* * *

 

The sun is setting through the window, casting a soft orange glow against the wall above the bed - this room faces the sun from the time it bridges the horizon to the time it sinks below it. Lex knew that already, but it's altered by context; she chose this room for Clara, she must have. Other Her, that is. She wonders what appealed so much more about this room, rather than the master suite. Maybe it's the way the gold of the curtains suits Clara's soft brown skin. Maybe it’s the way the almost _grandmotherly_ furnishings suit her non-existent aesthetic sensibilities.

Lex thinks all this with utter detachment. Her skin is tingling and numb, and so is her mind. She squints into the setting sun, light catching in her eyelashes, landing in a square of gold along her chest. Her shirt grows warmer but very slowly, weakly, as the white fabric tosses the sunlight back, blindingly bright.

She’s lightheaded. Dizzy. Bone tired. Her heart seems ill accustomed to beating at a normal pace - it's sore from overuse. Her mind, too, is tired from racing, tripping and stumbling drunkenly around her head. She'd be content to stand there motionless forever, but just as she thinks that, her wristbound chirps and vibrates. She glances down. An email from Mercy.

Behind her, the door opens. She hears Clara slip in. After a moment’s hesitation, she takes a seat on the edge of the bed, leaving enough room that Lex could bolt if she so chose, or completely ignore her without issue. She’s tempted by both, and neither.

She hears Clara take a deep breath and exhale through her nose.

“Do you want to talk?”

“You’re what one might charitably refer to as investigative journalist,” Lex says, voice more snide than it is strong. “Do I seem like I want to talk?”

“Not really,” Clara admits. She pauses, but can’t seem to help herself. “Do you want to hear what I found out from Kara?”

Lex turns her head just so to give her an assessing look. Clara’s face is plain and open, free of assumption, which is strange to see. Lex searches her for motive, but can’t find one - eventually she’s forced to ask: “Why?”

Clara shrugs with one shoulder, still looking neither annoyed, nor angry. It’s surreal to be spared her judgement for so long. “Because. It seemed useful and… I don’t know. I said I'd take care of stuff like that. You remember that, right?”

Lex rolls her eyes. Obviously she remembers.

“The Kryptonians are leaving,” Clara says. “That’s what the six month deadline is about, I guess - they’re building some kind of vessel to get them off-planet, planning to head out and colonize ‘New Krypton.’” She provides air quotes without being asked. “I don’t know what exactly is supposed to happen if they don’t leave in that amount of time. Inoculation, whatever that means. Probably something to keep them from developing powers.”

“I can think of a few ways,” Lex grumbles.

Clara sighs, but makes a clear choice not to engage her on that point. “This might be hard for you to believe, but I’m not thrilled by the idea of there being a bunch of other super-powered Kryptonians flying around.”

“Try _impossible_ for me to believe.”

Clara ignores her. “And I agree with you that six months is really pushing it.”

Lex turns slightly towards her, narrowing her eyes. “You neglected to share that opinion earlier.”

Clara shrugs again. “You didn't ask.”

Lex purses her lips, but silently cedes the point. “How many of them are there?”

“I don’t know. More than five, less than a hundred. Zor-El says a few of them are already starting to develop invulnerability and super-strength. Kara and I landed pretty close to their encampment, but far enough that I didn’t see any in person - it’s in Pennsylvania, ‘round Kettle Creek. They’re pretty far from any people. Even so... If there’s a bunch of them getting powers, I think we’ve got to try to get them off-planet and resettled as quick as possible.”

Lex drums her fingers against her leg through her pocket, glaring at the carpet as she thinks. “Shockingly, I agree with you.” And then: “How long, exactly, did it take you to develop powers?”

Clara’s quiet for a second, but when she answers, her tone is honest and even. “About six months, give or take. I was a child. I don’t really remember. They didn’t come in all at once. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that they got to be about as strong as they are now. I don’t know how they’d manifest in an adult.” She pauses; Lex sees her swallow, thickly. “...it hurt. Getting them.”

Lex isn’t sure how to respond to this. She surprises herself by taking no pleasure in imagining it; what had that looked like, she wondered? Finally, she opts for neutral language. “Your body was mutating. I would be more surprised if it hadn’t.”

“There’s something else,” Clara says, and she has to pause to take a deep breath. Lex waits expectantly as she grounds herself. “I think Kara’s planning to go with them.”

Lex scoffs, and this time the expected flight of vengeful glee runs up her spine. “Good riddance.”

“Lex…” Clara shakes her head a little, frowning. “She expects _me_ to go with her.”

Lex snorts. “Well, well. Maybe this _is_ the best timeline after all.”

“You’re such a pill.”

“What, am I supposed to be disappointed? I’ve been trying to get rid of you for the better part of a decade. Turns out all I had to do was wait patiently to find myself in a universe where you and all your ilk had already made the decision to leave of your own accord.”

“Yeah, well, let me assure you that you’re stuck with me for the foreseeable future,” Clara says, folding her arms. The hole the knife made in her shirt gaps a little as she does, treating Lex to a tantalizing stripe of skin along the center of her chest.

“What a surprise,” she says, fighting the urge to stare.

Clara doesn’t seem to notice. “Kal agreed to go, but if it comes to that… I mean, I hope it won’t. You think we’re going to be stuck here for six months?”

“It’s possible,” Lex admits, which is only slightly better than saying outright that she doesn’t know.

She still hasn’t identified what’s behind the disc - obviously, they’ve been transported to a different universe, but not in the physical sense. These bodies are the ones native to this universe, not their own. Somehow, Lex and Clara’s internal essences - their minds? - have been transported separate from their physical bodies; that’s a strike against any kind of white or black hole, which is a problem. A white or black hole, she could ostensibly recreate with a hadron collider. But this - a metaphysical dimensional rift?

“I don’t know enough about the phenomenon to recreate it. It’s not an Einstein-Rosen bridge, and it’s not magic. But that eliminates the two most easily resolvable things it could be.”

“What would you need to start figuring it out?”

Lex gives her a disbelieving look. “I’m in the enduring and unfortunate position of needing _scientific instruments_ to conduct any sort of in-depth investigation - have you seen any lying around?”

Clara frowns again, but seems to free Lex’s point from the sarcasm it's stewed in. “Okay, so… like a lab? Do you think you have one here?”

“If I do, I’m sure I don’t know where it is.”

Clara hums and nods. “LexCorp?”

Lex purses her lips, uneasy with how well she’s taking all this. “Ideally.”

“Okay,” Clara says.

Lex cranks an eyebrow. “ _Okay?_ ” she repeats.

Clara just shrugs a third time. “Yeah. Okay. You need a lab. We know where one is. It makes sense.”

It does, but that doesn’t clear up Lex’s confusion. She’s well and truly baffled by her - in fact, she has been since Clara walked into the kitchen. What’s her angle, anyway? She doesn’t pity Lex she says, and Lex believes that much. But she doesn’t know what the hell she wants. Why bother staying in the kitchen, goading Lex into throwing knives at her? Why bother following her back to the bedroom? Why is she so damn calm? What the hell is this?

“It’s gonna be tough to get you out of here unnoticed,” Clara says, not seeming to sense Lex’s unease. “You’ll need an excuse.”

“I have one,” Lex says, slowly, still mired in thought. She glances back down at her wristbound and the display reappears before her. Mercy’s message confirms what she’d already suspected - LexCorp’s medical division reviewed the sample of the ‘swine flu’ virus from Baltimore. Mercy’s attached a copy of the photo from the electron microscope. _That’s no flu._ It’s too… manicured. Sculpted. Painstakingly perfect, in a way organic viruses never are.

A knock at the door interrupts her thoughts - Clara turns her head, then gets up to answer it. One of the chefs is waiting on the other side, an antique silver tray in her hands. Lex is about to tell her off, but Clara takes it too quickly for her to get a word in edgewise.

“Thanks,” she says. “Thanks so much.” She takes the tray and closes the door with a friendly nod.

Lex stands there, trying to figure out what the hell is happening, as Clara sets it down on the coffee table and begins taking the lids off. A pungent, mouthwatering bouquet washes through the room: fresh grilled trout and poached quail eggs, saffron risotto sprinkled with licorice and savory potatoes, fresh sprigs of asparagus in a mouthwatering red wine sauce and crisp green arugula with beets and goat cheese. There are two plates, both framed by crystal glasses of water and one by a glass of red wine; one with a stately arrangement, and the other with a Reuben sandwich and potatoes, clearly intended for Clara's inferior tastes. A single tendril of sweet pea sits on top, looking positively _marooned_ , it’s tiny curly-cue signalling for backup that will never arrive. Clara inhales and goes bug-eyed on sight of it.

“Man,” she breathes, as though she’s genuinely impressed by the craftsmanship involved in putting corned beef and sauerkraut between two pieces of rye. Lex shakes her head a little, struggling to believe she's real.

“What's all this then?”

Clara takes a seat on one of the couches beside the coffee table, covering her lap with one of the cloth napkins. She glances up at Lex, gestures vaguely to the spread.

“It's food, Lex. You've seen food before, right? I don't have to explain how it works?”

Lex doesn’t dignify that with a response. The unwelcome interruption has drummed up her unease again, filaments of confusion flitting around her brain like soap flakes in a snow globe.

Lex considers herself an expert on human behavior - she realized very early on in life that she needed to study their drives and motivations in depth if she ever wanted to have any chance of controlling them, itself the only way to give her any sense of security, or render any justice in her own life. She considers herself an expert on Clara Kent, too. But she hasn't the slightest idea what's going on - what does she _want?_ To get home, obviously, but Lex already agreed to that. Is she buttering her up? Surely she doesn’t think a pat on the shoulder and a snack are going to alter Lex's memory of the last ten years.

Maybe she thinks she can manipulate her while she’s weak, Lex thinks, with a growing, silent fury. Maybe she thinks she's vulnerable. She's in for a nasty surprise, if that's the case.

“Whatever your little _gambit_ is,” Lex purrs, letting the threat insinuate itself, “it won’t work.”

Clara looks up again - she's already bitten into her sandwich, and is muscling through a hearty cheekful of it. She covers her mouth, and speaks without swallowing. “My _gambit?_ ”

“Whatever you're planning.”

“Well, I was planning on starting with this half of the sandwich, then working my way through the potatoes. But if you don’t think that's viable I can start on the potatoes first.”

Lex glares. “Play dumb as much as you like. I'm onto you.”

Clara watches her for a while, chewing. Then, at last, she swallows and says, in an exasperatingly patient tone of voice: “Lex. Would it be possible for you to quit being the absolute most paranoid narcissist I've ever met for… I don't know. However long it takes me to eat a sandwich? Ten minutes? Would it kill you to not read into something as absolutely, objectively banal as me _eating food_?”

Lex narrows her eyes, but fails to summon a response before it becomes a little embarrassing not to have one.

“I'm not sure which of those three questions you intend for me to answer.”

“Lex,” Clara says, “sit down and eat your dinner. Jiminy Christmas.”

* * *

 

Clara’s not sure what she’s supposed to do with someone who can eat food adversarially. Lex holds her cutlery like a woman who’s more accustomed to throwing knives than using one. She has an unnervingly dainty way of eating - careful and precise, like she’s loathe to let her food touch her skin or the table - and she stares at her the whole time, like she’s waiting for a good opening to present itself before she jabs her fork into Clara’s eye. It’s ludicrous. Clara’s starting to realize she has no idea what passes for an insult in Lex’s addled mind, if ordering dinner is equivalent to a death threat. Actually, she’s seen Lex brush off death threats like they’re nothing. She’s completely backwards - like someone took your average person and inverted her understanding of human behavior. Death threats? Fine. Grilled fish and a glass of water? Grounds for weaponizing silverware.

Finally, she can’t take the silence anymore, and she’s out of food to distract her.

“You think it’s gonna be hard? Fooling Mercy?”

Lex squints at her a little. “What do you mean?”

“I mean…” What does she mean? She tips her head a little to the side, thinking it through. “So far we haven’t really had to pull the wool over the eyes of anybody we _know_ really well. Obviously you and Cynthia know each other, but it’s not like you’re the best of friends. Kara and Cynthia and Peace and the Joint Chiefs know _us,_  but we don’t really know _them_ very well. In our home universe, I mean.”

“And?”

“Well. Just… You and Mercy are really close. Right?”

Lex watches her for a while. She picks up her glass of wine and sips slowly, taking her in. Her thoughts are totally unreadable.

“No,” she says, at last. “Not particularly.”

“Oh, bullpucky,” Clara scoffs.

Lex’s eyes bulge a little. “ _Excuse me?_ ”

“I said _bullpucky_.”

“God,” Lex sneers, contempt riding high on her top lip, “you’re so _Kansas_ , it’s hard to take you seriously.”

“You realize you _live_ in Kansas,” Clara says.

“I live in Metropolis. It’s not remotely the same thing.”

“You also realize any time you change the subject in the middle of a conversation, it’s because you know I’m right.”

“Mercy Graves is my _employee_. Something you might understand if you had a smidgeon of business sense or ambition in life...”

“Mercy Graves is the only person you’ve ever let into your life for any longer than a week or two. She’s been with you for… what? Ten years? You trust her in a way you don’t trust anybody. Forget being your ‘employee’ - she might as well be your life partner.”

It’s true, but like most of the true things she’s said about Lex today it comes out totally unplanned - does she really know her that well? She guesses she must. That all sounds right anyway, even if Lex is looking at her like she’s wondering the same thing. Clara swallows, suddenly feeling a little nervous.

“Well? Am I wrong?”

“...no.” But Lex looks uncomfortable admitting it. She turns her head, swirling her wine - Clara watches the legs of it catch on the sides of her glass, trailing shadows over her skin. “It’s absurd to speculate. No one else has detected it so far.”

“I don’t think that’s true. Look,” Clara says to Lex’s imminent glare, “both Kara and Cynthia seemed… put off. By how you’re acting. Which - don’t give me that face - is totally normal, I know. But it might not be normal for this universe.”

Lex sits back on the couch and crosses one leg over the other, nursing her wine. The look on her face isn’t _friendly_ , precisely, but it’s certainly less outwardly hostile than usual.

“I thought of that,” she says, because of course she has.

“If we’re gonna be stuck here for a while, we need to figure out how to… fill out these cover identities. I don’t even know how I’m supposed to be acting. Other Lex is clearly…” More well adjusted? Nicer? “...different. From you. I have to assume Kal is too. And then there’s the whole other elephant in the room…”

“Which is?”

It’s Clara’s turn to make a face. “The fact that we’re in an alternate universe where we’re _involved?_ ”

Lex scoffs like she finds this very funny, but not in a nice way. “Of course you’d struggle with _that_ of all things.”

Another insult Clara didn’t intend. “I’m not _struggling_ with it, Lex.”

“Oh, really? I suppose all that balking is just for show.”

“I’m not _balking._ I was surprised. Anybody would be surprised.”

“Save it,” Lex says. The wine is flushing her thick lips, making them darker than usual.

Clara frowns at her, shifting a little further back in her seat. There’s something in Lex’s expression that makes her uneasy - something that Lex rarely lets her see. It’s hurt, Clara realizes. Lex is hurt by the idea that Clara wouldn’t want to be in a relationship with her, something which is… honestly baffling in every way. And yet, Clara’s reminded of something Martha told her a long time ago: no woman ever wants to feel undesirable.

“Lex,” Clara says, carefully, not entirely sure why she’s bothering. “You get that it’s not... You’re a beautiful woman. An excellent conversationalist, a genius. You’re charming, you’re brilliant, you even manage to be funny sometimes. I could envision myself with a woman like you. Your looks, your money, your charm - none of that’s the problem, Lex. It’s you. Your actions. Your obsession with me, your anger, your hatefulness. _That’s_ the problem. The you part.”

Lex watches her for a moment, seeming to ponder this, her forefinger drumming a little against the edge of her wine glass. Then, after a while, she shrugs, the hurt vanishing from her expression.

“Suit yourself,” she says, voice velvety.

Clara sighs. Leave it to Lex to be reassured by ‘it’s not your looks, it’s everything you’ve said and done for the last decade.’

“You’re so weird.”

Lex shrugs again, utterly unbothered. “Unsophisticated minds are always at odds with the interesting.”

Clara feels the vaguest of pinks feather across her cheeks. She scowls, refusing to get distracted - Lex is practically preening on the opposite couch, settling in like a smug housecat, pleased as punch. Restored confidence pours off of her, and it looks good. _Stupid sexy Lex Luthor._

“We’re going to have to figure out how to be convincing as a couple,” Clara says.

“Can I assume you need practice because it’ll be your first time as part of a _convincing couple_?”

“That _means_ ,” Clara continues, ignoring her, “we have to have a decent idea of how to convincingly be… us. In this universe.” She pauses, mulling over something that’s beginning to bug her. “I don’t even know who Kal is supposed to be. Do I have a job? It’s the middle of the week and I haven’t gotten the feeling that there’s anywhere else I’m expected to be. I’m not Superwoman… I can’t possibly be a reporter, and be…” She gestures loosely to the room, and then to Lex.

“My _inamorata_?” Lex suggests.

Clara grits her teeth and averts her eyes. Does she have to _purr_ like that when she says it?

“It’s too big a conflict of interest. Besides, Lois would be on me by now if I’d gone this long without checking in.” She looks back at Lex to find her on her wristbound. “What are you doing?”

“Looking you up,” says Lex, as though it should be obvious.

Clara supposes it should have been. Somehow, she didn’t think of that. She watches Lex scroll for a second, chewing her cheek, before she realizes Lex probably isn’t going to share with the class. She sits there, too chicken - then, finally, she finds the will to stand up, skirting around the table to take a seat, gingerly, at Lex’s side, peering over her shoulder.

She sees Lex give her a sideways glance, but she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t lean closer or ask if Clara wants her to go back, either - she keeps scrolling along as though she’s the only one on the couch. Maybe that’s for the best. It makes it aggravating but not overly intimate to read over her shoulder.

Her Wikipedia page is sparse, but not as empty as she thought it would be. Lex has already skimmed past the Early Life section, which Clara desperately wants to ask about - she resists the urge. She focuses instead on the Career section; it lists her - Kal, that is - receiving a sociology degree from KU, then doing a brief stint in social work. No question as to why that was short-lived. Clara can only imagine being forced to play witness to that sort of human suffering without employing any of her abilities, or transitioning into her Superwoman persona.

But then…

“...I was a firefighter?”

Lex hums, finger tracing over the text. “Starting in Metropolis, then for Kansas Fish & Wildlife. You eventually transitioned to work with UN Fire Rescue, before joining the Peace Corps.”

“Huh.” Maybe she’d found a way to be Superwoman after all.

She’d always considered firefighting - right after she’d considered joining the coast guard, or the police force, and right before Joan and Martha had insisted that she was going to college, and that was final. After she’d graduated, she’d already made the decision to become Superwoman; to save people her way, without swearing allegiance to any organization even remotely affiliated with the military. Besides that, she felt like her powers gave her an unfair advantage. Going solo felt like it at least gave local law enforcement and disaster relief room to do their jobs.

But if she’d never become Superwoman - if that had never been an option - maybe that would’ve been the most logical path. The best way for her to help people. It’s unearned, but she feels a strange sort of pride thinking about it. Not a layabout, then, not an ornament on Lex’s arm; a firefighter, and an officer for the Peace Corps, helping people all over the world.

“But you quit,” Lex says, still reading. “A few months before the start of my campaign.”

“I quit? Why?”

Lex shrugs, seeming disinterested in the question. “It doesn’t say.”

Before Clara can stop her, she scrolls down and lands in the ‘Relationship With Lex Luthor’ section.

Clara makes a noise like an airhorn and swats the wristbound like a mosquito. It promptly pops and squeaks in alarm, sparking a little. The interface vanishes and Clara’s stuck staring at where it used to be to avoid looking Lex in the eye.

“...oops,” she whispers.

“Tell me again,” Lex says, teeth razor sharp, “how _very deeply okay with this_ you are. I want to sample it alongside the ruinous odor of our _one_ lifeline going up in smoke. It’s a sensory high I feel certain I may never get again, given that you’ve just _screwed us_!”

“Sorry?” Clara tries.

“Oh, you’re going to be!” Lex says, clearly searching the room for weaponry, a frighteningly gleeful look on her face. “I can promise you that!”

“You said you wanted to head to Metropolis, right?”

Lex is vibrating with fury. “If you think for a second I’m going to _fly with you_ right now--”

Clara scoffs, ignoring her own blush. _Clumsy, stupid, don’t know your own strength..._ “Oh, what, come on. You want to go to through Air Force One?”

“I’d like to put _you_ through a jet engine first--”

“That sounds like a big waste of jet engine.”

“That’s what it says on your birth certificate.”

“Come on, Lex, we both know I don’t have a birth certificate.”

Lex opens her mouth to reply but ends up just squinting, totally off balance. Clara, desperate for all this to be over, puts her hands up in surrender.

“Listen. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I’m sure we can fix it.”

“ _We?_ ”

“I’m sure _you_ can fix it.”

Lex snarls wordlessly and turns back to her wristbound, starting to poke and prod at it. Clara takes this as the only parlay she’s going to get. Once it seems like Lex is fully absorbed, she carefully tiptoes around her to the door and pokes her nose out. Secret Service is no one she recognizes - the copper-skinned woman from before must have gone home by now. But as she predicted, Peace is in the hall, texting on her own wristbound.

“Peace,” Clara says.

She promptly spooks, fumbling a little. “Uh. Hi.”

“You can go home,” Clara tells her. “We’re gonna… go flying.” She doesn’t know if she ought to tell Peace where they’re going or not. Probably, for the sake of national security. But she doesn’t think Lex will mind her being a little more tight-lipped than normal until they know how to handle all this.

Peace nods like this is normal. “Date night?”

“Sure,” Clara says.

“ _Very_ convincing,” she hears Lex mutter. Clara wishes she could elbow her from across the room.

“Thanks for everything. We’ll see you tomorrow.”

Peace nods, then leans in to look past her. “Thank you, Madam President.”

Lex flicks her wrist in a shooing motion, clearly too busy to be bothered to insult her. Clara shuts the door - as she turns back to her, a strange breeze tickles her breastbone and she glances down. There’s a hole in her shirt - two, actually - where Lex’s knife drove through the fabric. She flushes even deeper.

“I’m gonna change,” she says, and rockets over to the armoire and into the bathroom without waiting for Lex to reply.

She sets her change of clothes on the toilet and drags her hands through her hair. Of all the stupid overreactions… What did she think she was going to see? Pictures of her - not her, she reminds herself, not her! Kal - and Lex making out? Even that would be raunchy by Wikipedia standards; her (not her!) with her hand in Lex’s, or her hand around Lex’s waist? Something both intimate and casual, clean and family-friendly. As though she could ever do anything to make Lex Luthor of all people ‘family-friendly’. Criminy.

What did she think it was going to say? Or was it the photos that really frightened her? The irrefutable proof that some version of her has held Lex Luthor close, fingers tangled in hers, and kissed her the way she kisses girls who are…

She swallows thickly, hands resting on the edge of the sink.

...girls who are really special.

She exhales and closes her eyes.

She doesn’t know if she can do this. She has to, she reminds herself. She has to.

 _Right?_ Breaking up with Lex would be such a debacle - she’s sleeping in the White House. She can only imagine how public it’s gonna get if she stops doing that. And then she’d be cut loose to do… what, exactly? Kal doesn’t have a job. She can’t imagine having the kind of disposable income that would allow her to pay rent without one, nor can she imagine being the type of person to keep her apartment if she’d basically moved in with Lex.

(One of many reasons she’d never actually gotten to that stage with any previous girlfriend. She likes her apartment, dilapidated death trap that it is, and it’s rent-locked besides. Where is she going to find an apartment in downtown Metropolis for $600 a month in this day and age?)

She doesn’t even know if her parents are her parents - she had noticed Kal’s last name was Kent, too, so there’s a decent probability. But everything’s so weird in this universe that it seems risky to hedge her bets on Joan and Martha being willing to put her up while she spends a week or two googling herself in the vain hope of being able to cobble together a convincing facade. Kara would probably be happy to have her out at the settlement, but that’s a whole other can of worms Clara doesn’t even want to open, very less _live in_ for… well, however long they’re stuck here.

All that’s without mentioning the fact that she’d be leaving Lex in the White House, unsupervised. Lex, who's her best chance at getting home. 

No, she needs to be here to keep an eye on her, she knows that. ‘Breaking up’ isn’t viable. Not only that, but it feels embarrassing to even contemplate - Lex can hack it here, so can she. Hell, Lex doesn’t even seem particularly bothered by the idea of them… seeing each other. Clara takes her glasses off and rubs at her eyes. God, she’s so infuriating. Is that another bid for oneupsmanship? She sees how poorly Clara’s handling this and has decided, for the first time in her life, to be the bigger person?

Clara takes off her shirt and folds it as best she can, wondering how she’s going to explain it to the cleaners. How does laundry work here? She can do it herself, right? She has no idea. There’s a hole along the chest and the shoulder, and another cut she didn’t notice along the cuff. She sighs and carries on changing - her nose is a little sore from wearing the glasses all day.

She's not even sure she can imagine what a relationship with Lex would look like. Not sure she could even with paragraphs of explanation and helpful graphics. Who was the last person Lex actually dated, anyhow? Clara's so accustomed to the revolving door of her love life that she usually fails to pay attention to which model or actress or obscure Transylvanian artist type it is this week.

She pads out of the bathroom, lost in thought, clothes folded and tucked under her arm. Lex glances up and her face contorts.

“What are you _wearing_?”

Clara looks down at the black track pants and dark blue long-sleeved shirt from UN Fire Prevention. “...sweats?”

“They’re hideous.”

“They’re comfortable,” Clara says, tossing the folded clothes on the desk and grabbing a jean jacket that she’s positive is hers from the open closet. She changes her dress shoes for sneakers. “You gonna stand there and try to tell me you haven’t had a Charley horse for the last fifteen minutes?”

“These are Manolos,” Lex sneers, gesturing to them as though that’s supposed to mean something.

“Yeah, well, they look like an all-day workout. I’d recommend something with a strap. And…” She gestures to Lex’s plunging neckline. “Something warmer up top.”

Lex looks like she’d rather jump into a vat of acid. But after a second, she kicks off her shoes. Then, without breaking eye contact, she reaches up and starts unbuttoning her shirt. It’s all so direct and unembellished that Clara almost doesn’t realize what she’s looking at. As soon as she does, her face heats up like a curling iron - she whirls away, shielding her eyes.

“Jeez!” she hisses. “Warn a girl!”

She can see through the blinds of her fingers as that old devilish grin curls over Lex’s mouth. Her low chuckling is a purr, complimenting the kickdrum of Clara’s pulse.

When she finally chances turning around, Lex is buttoning a snow white cape-style coat over a turtleneck in what might well be one of the most reasonable outfits Clara’s ever seen her in. She’s tempted to pinch herself to see if she’s dreaming until she gets down to the shoes.

“Those are just different heels.”

“They’re boots,” Lex snaps, and Clara watches her fuss with the closures on the coat, clearly annoyed. “I’m wearing jeans, what do you want from me?”

So she is. That’s a first.

“I didn’t even know you owned jeans.”

“I _don’t._ What am I, a barista?”

“Yeah, there it is,” Clara says under her breath. Well, she thinks, no time like the present. She sighs and crosses the room, putting her glasses in her pocket. Then, she reaches out and puts a hand along Lex’s back. Lex jumps at her touch.

“What are you doing?”

“Trust me,” Clara says, bending at the knees. “This is the easiest way to do it.”

“You are not carrying me around like I’m Anna Darrow,” Lex snarls.

“Nope,” Clara agrees. “I’m carrying you around like you’re Scarlett O’Hara.”

And with that, she scoops her up and jumps out the window, letting the blast of cool spring air steal the words out of Lex’s mouth.

* * *

 

“So… what was your last relationship like?”

Lex is beginning to think Clara Kent is possessed.

They’ve been flying for fifteen minutes in perfect silence, and now she's making the absolute worst type of small talk. She’s been steadfastly not looking at Lex the entire time - a particularly impressive feat given that Lex is literally sitting in her arms, being carried like a damn southern belle with low blood pressure.

“I can’t fathom how you'd imagine that was your business, Kent,” Lex says, tartly.

Clara sighs in a put upon sort of way. “Lex. You realize we're about three thousand feet in the air. If you're going to be annoying, I can always just drop you.”

Lex sniffs, haughty. “How prototypically brutish of you.”

There’s an ominous dip - Clara lurches forward just enough to make it feel like she might drop her. Lex, to her chagrin, shrieks. Her arms fly around Clara's neck, holding so tight she chokes off her airflow a little, twisting her fist in Clara's hair. Instantly, she feels Clara pull her close, solidifying her grip.

“Ow! Woah, okay - joking. I was joking.”

“I will _kill you_ , Kent, you hear me--”

“ _Lex_.” Clara squeezes her a little, and Lex's heart begins to slow, reluctantly. “I've got you. I promise.” She huffs out a breath. “Jeez. I didn't mean to scare you. Sorry.”

It takes a few moments before she finally adds: “...can you please stop pulling my hair now?”

“Don't act like you can feel it,” Lex grumbles.

“I can, actually, and it doesn't feel great.”

Lex blinks a little. She gives an experimental yank.

“ _Ow_ ,” Clara says, wrestling her hand loose, “okay, ow, yeah, could you _please_ not.”

“I always assumed your sensation would be dulled,” Lex says, fascinated. There’s not a single stray hair between her fingers.

“Well, you know what they say about assuming."

A few moments pass, wind whistling past them. The air is cold, but Clara gives off a steady, inhuman heat, looking straight ahead. Lex marvels, privately, at the handsome cut of her square chin, the casual power rippling through her big hands.

She's always assumed Clara had a dulled sense of physical sensation to accompany her indestructibility. There was sparse evidence to suggest it - not nearly as much as she should have looked for, but it seemed like a given. It hurts, then, when she shoots her? Or electrifies her? It can't be everything, she’d taken that porcelain to the head without flinching, and the knives too. Lex restrains the desire to begin experimenting. No need to give Clara too much warning of that… she'll need to observe authentic reactions to get reliable results, after all.

Clara interrupts her train of thought just as it's getting good. “What about… what's her name. Ms. Senno? The gal you had working on your museum.”

Lex scoffs. “Who, Farida? Farida and I weren't dating. We were screwing.” And that was almost a year ago now.

She anticipated how this would make Clara Kent, Chief of the Morality Police, gag and squirm, but it's entertaining watching it happen in real time.

“I think I inhaled a bug,” Clara chokes.

“Unlikely at this altitude.”

Clara fumbles, bright red, clearly trying to mine something useful to say from what Lex can assume is her absolute dearth of experience with casual sex. “You don't… save that for special occasions?”

Lex snorts. “Why would I? There's nothing special about it, save, perhaps, that it's something extant that I enjoy.”

“Wouldn't that by definition make it rare and exotic?”

Lex shrugs, deciding not to honor the sarcasm in Clara's tone. “No moreso than an expensive car, a vintage wine, or a full body massage. All things which I can obtain without the messy details of human relations. And, for that matter, at a much lower price.”

“You wouldn't include…” Clara struggles for a second. “...that sort of thing as part and parcel to dating?”

“Absolutely not. Are you insane? If I awarded that designation to any lamprey with the ability to get me off I'd never have time for anything else.”

Clara's quiet for a moment, expression going oddly somber.

“...that's pretty depressing, Lex.”

Lex scoffs and shrugs again. She still hasn’t taken her arms down from around Clara’s neck, so it’s less of a movement, more of a gesture. “I have my fun. Can you say the same?”

The silence that follows is ominous, but Lex can't resist the jab that springs up on her tongue.

“How _is_ Lois these days?”

Clara's grip on her tightens, and she squares her jaw. Lex tries to ignore the small thrill that goes up her spine - whether from Clara’s firm grip or her clear discomfort, she’s not sure.

“You know what, you're right. I don't want to talk about this.”

“Oh, come now Kent, don’t be boring.” Lex gets comfortable, repositioning herself in more of lounging sprawl in Clara’s arms. She kicks her feet, loving the increasingly unhappy look on Clara’s face. “Quid pro quo.”

“God, you’re infuriating.”

“I told you mine. Tell me yours.”

“You know damn well what happened, Lex.”

It’s not the terseness but the curse that surprises her - Clara Kent really does know how to make a girl feel special. Lex smirks, enormously satisfied.

“Oh, I know the basics. But I’ve always disdained rumor. Come on. We’re… ‘sharing.’ Or whatever it is you call it.”

Clara gives her a narrow-eyed look. “Having a conversation?”

Lex shrugs. “If you’d like. You demand sensitive information from me, I demand sensitive information of you. Perfectly fair.”

“You _hate_ when things are perfectly fair.”

“No, I don’t. They just very rarely are.”

Clara’s still looking at her sideways. This seems irresponsible in Lex’s opinion - she can’t possibly be watching where they’re going like that. Lex takes initiative and reaches up to forcibly point her head forward.

Clara sighs. “We broke up, Lex. I don’t know what you want to hear. We were together for almost six years. I’m not really ready to talk about it yet.”

“You broke up last year,” Lex says, disbelieving.

“Yeah. Some people don’t shake off relationships as easy as you do.”

This seems like it should be an insult, but Lex can’t figure out what it’s supposed to be insulting. Her lack of sentimentality? That’s hardly a weakness. If anything, Clara sounds almost… envious. Lex shifts uncomfortably, and turns her gaze to the horizon. The rich dark blue of the night sky seems to stretch on forever before her, the soft lights of humanity shining from the earth below.

“What was your last… I don’t know. ‘Serious’ relationship?”

Lex considers not answering, but the sharp pang in her chest demands that she invoke her name aloud: “...Lana.”

“Lana?” Clara peers down at her incredulously. “Lana Lang? That was years ago.”

Lex knows damn well that it was years ago. She doesn’t need to be told that. Hell, it was before Lois and Clara got together, and it only lasted a few months. It’s not like she hasn’t had her fun in the intervening years. It’s not like she’s been marinating in heartbreak or anything. It’s more by chance than by choice that she hasn’t really taken up with anyone else since Lana. She’s been busy. Other things have demanded her attention. She has sex when she wants it, how she wants it, and free of unnecessary complication.

She must have been quiet too long, because she feels Clara clear her throat and look away. “...sorry.”

“For what?”

“For what I said earlier.” There’s a beat of silence. “I guess you don’t shake off relationships easily, either.”

Lex scoffs, still refusing to look at her. “Not all of us need a simpering romantic co-conspirator to feel secure in ourselves, Kent. I’m happier alone.”

Clara doesn’t say anything to that. In fact, she doesn’t say anything at all for a long time - long enough that, after a few minutes with nothing to do but stare into the wind chapping her cheeks, Lex chances a glance up at her. She’s startled to find Clara watching her, a strange expression on her face.

“What?” she snaps.

“Nothing,” Clara says, which is clearly a lie. She turns her face to the horizon. Finally, she continues: “I’m not.”

“You’re not what?”

“Happier alone,” Clara says.

This time, it’s Lex’s turn to lapse into silence. The frankness of the admission makes her uneasy - like Clara’s just thrust a bit of the truth into her lap without permission.

“That’s what makes me stronger than you,” she says.

“Yeah,” Clara nods. “Maybe.”

After that, there doesn’t seem to be anything left to say. It’s only as Metropolis comes into view beneath them that Lex realizes she’s had her arms around Clara’s neck for the entire flight. Her pride flares - she thinks about pulling away. But it’s a facile gesture at this point. And besides, there’s no telling if Clara will drop her. Better to leave them there, for safety’s sake.

* * *

 

Clara starts to descend earlier than Lex is expecting. The twin spires of the LexCorp Towers leer at them just below the clouds, but instead of aiming for the helipad, Clara angles down.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m gonna land.”

“Where?”

“The street,” Clara says, like this makes any kind of sense.

“Why the hell would you land on the street? You think I’m going to walk in like a pedestrian?”

Clara squints at her, slowing to a stop. “Okay. Let me run through this with you. You think you - the President of the United States, I’ll remind you, _not_ the CEO of LexCorp - and _I_ \- the… whatever I am. Your…”

“Paramour?”

“Stop that. You think we’re just gonna be able to walk in one of the private entrances, huh? You don’t think Mercy might’ve - oh, I dunno, _changed the locks?_ ”

“My name’s on the damn building,” Lex snarls. “I _built_ the damn locks.”

Clara’s face screws up like she’s being ridiculous, but eventually she sighs and shakes her head. “Fine. Where do you want me to go.”

“The roof - LexCorp Tower West.”

The second sigh is really overkill - Clara’s made her opinion known, and Lex has told her where she can stick it. Surely any greater elaboration is unnecessary. Still, as they kick back up towards the roof, Lex thinks she deliberately moves a little faster than she needs to to make Lex’s stomach dip and make her cling a little tighter. Vindictive, Lex thinks. Slightly sexy.

They land, more gracefully than Lex was expecting. Clara lets her down slowly and Lex brushes herself off. Her legs tingle from disuse and her back aches a little in the shape of Clara’s steady palm. She also finds herself incredibly overdressed for a Metropolis spring climate, which is unfortunate. It’ll be difficult to strike the appropriate level of intimidation in a turtleneck. That’s what she gets for listening to Clara. Not that she’d been uncomfortable on the way here, but layers might have been a better suggestion. She feels ridiculous, which is only exacerbated by the denim. She looks like a damn vaquero.

She picks her way across the roof, placing her feet carefully to avoid triggering the defense mechanisms built into the panels there. (Though her bio signature should be sufficient to prevent them from targeting her, she's not taking any chances on Clara.) The handle of the door scans her fingerprints and the retina scanner flicks and whirs, taking a quick scan of her right eye. The lock clicks open and she pulls.

“That's not to keep _me_ out, is it?” Clara says from behind her. “You realize I could just punch my way in.”

Just beyond the door, a web of laser sights deactivates, turrets withdrawing into the wall. Lex lets Clara make direct eye contact with one of the retreating turrets before she says, “You're welcome to try that next time.”

“Just seems like overkill for roof security,” Clara says, as they walk down the stairs.

“I have a lot of enemies. Several of them nearly as tacky and devoid of decorum as you.”

“Big words from the woman dressed like Arctic Rescue Barbie,” Clara mutters.

“What was that?” Lex snaps.

“Nothing,” says Clara, but like she knows Lex heard her just fine.

“That's a fairly specific Barbie reference coming from a woman your size.”

“You think I was _born_ six-foot-four?”

Lex is pretty sure Clara was born at whatever size she would currently find most irritating, seeing that she's been divinely crafted to vex her, but before she can say so, they reach the doorway leading to the ninety-second floor. Her office. She doesn't bother to brace herself as she steps out into the marble hallway, polished so smooth you can see your reflection in it.

“Does she know we're coming?” Clara asks, the playfulness in her voice exchanged for wariness. “Did you call ahead?”

“No.”

“What-- Lex. Then how does she know we're coming?”

Lex doesn’t bother to explain this. Of course Mercy knows she's coming. She sent her an email about the virus, of course she knows she's coming. And besides that, the halls are too empty, too silent to be a coincidence. There are no guards making the rounds. The hidden security measures have been deactivated. The hall is cavernous; silent. The secretary's desk outside her office is empty. An invitation.

“Lex, you can't just--”

Idiot, of course she can. It's her office. Lex pulls the double doors open and marches in like she owns the place, which - current occupant notwithstanding - she absolutely does. Clara hisses some kind of warning from behind her, and Lex relishes in not paying her any mind.

The office is just as she left it: awash in the crystalline blue lights of the city that filter through the floor-to-ceiling windows behind the desk, and the prismatic light from the enormous fish tank that occupies their side of the room. The angular juts and crests of the ripples on the surface of the tank become a dappled quilt of shadows that drapes across the white marble floor. And at the far side of the room, silhouetted against the windows, slender as a blade in a black Armani suit, is Mercy.

She looks good, which is something Lex is unaccustomed to noticing. It's usually so rare that Lex goes even an hour or two without seeing her that she’s become as ubiquitous to Lex as her own shadow - but no, her hair is shorter, isn't it? Cut back from its typical bob into an extremely short tousled pixie cut. She looks sleek, the suit a perfect fit, the crisp black undershirt unbuttoned to her clavicle. No tie. She looks better without it, Lex realizes.

“Mercy,” Lex says, and she's surprised by what a relief it is to see her. It's been the world's longest day, and Lex is more than ready for it to be over and for things to go back go normal - and Mercy, as much as she'd resented Clara pointing it out, _is_ her normal.

“Lex,” Mercy says, in that prototypically even tone of hers, and Lex's relief catalyzes, drifting like pillowy foam in her chest at the sound of her voice.

And then, she sees something move in the shadows, and her relief ices over in her chest. A figure emerges, faster than she anticipated and with a gun she doesn't have. Behind her, Clara goes rigid.

“Don't move,” the figure advises, speech lilting with an accent Lex struggles to place: Israeli? Macedonian? Turkish? But even as she tries to place the accent, she recognizes the woman: copper-skinned in a government issue suit with a head full of microbraids. Amazonian, Lex thinks with fresh, powerful bitterness - her accent is Amazonian.

Hope.

At the other side of the room, Mercy steps away from the desk and slowly makes her way to Hope's side. Lex feels Clara press up behind her, clearly looking for a way to get between her and the gun without spooking Hope.

“We're going to ask you some questions,” Mercy says.

Lex smiles, tight and controlled, already daydreaming about tearing Mercy's head off with her teeth.

“Shoot.”


	5. The Enemy of My Enemy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lex and Clara square off with Mercy, and strap in for the worst night on record.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your patience! This chapter has been a long time coming, and was fun as hell to write. I've also learned how to use a markdown editor for gdocs that should eliminate some pesky (and persistent) formatting errors. Enjoy c;
> 
> Tws for this one: referenced past child abuse, referenced past drug use, smoking, and canon typical violence.

Shortly after her twenty-second birthday, Lex arrives in Metropolis sober and alone. She has one suitcase in the trunk of her Porsche, one cardboard box sitting in the passenger's seat. These and a box of cigarettes in her coat pocket constitute the entirety of her belongings. She's travelled light for the last few years. A hermit crab, carrying all her life and livelihood on her back. 

The apartment is in New Troy, only a block or two from the site of the new building. The blueprints are peeking out of the cardboard box, taking in the scenery - she'd finalized them with Lionel along with the logo. 

“How very art nouveau,” he'd said, with obvious relish. Seventeen floors, twenty if you counted the basement levels - and it's better to start small, she thinks, better not to let him understand the full breadth of her plans just yet. He'd wanted to drink a glass of champagne, a toast to their new alliance, and Lex had been forced to sit with him for another three hours after that, all the while trying to pretend like being in the same room with him doesn't give her hives - doesn’t make her want to use so badly that her hands shake and in passing moments she finds herself fumbling for the clasp of her watch and the razor blade they confiscated from the false compartment there. He takes so gleefully to any show of submission that it makes her sick. As though he hadn't dragged her back here from out of the wild. As though he can break her now, the way he did when she was still a child. 

He has no idea who he's dealing with, she thinks. The problem is, she does. And it makes her want nothing more than to turn around and drive, pedal to the floor, until he’s a bug-like smear on her back windshield, until she's gone. Again. 

She could run again, she tells herself - vanish out from under his hands in an instant. The road unfurls under her tires, a black ribbon stretching in two directions: forward and back. She's lived six years without him, and it had taken everything to work herself free from between his skinny fingers the first time. As she drives to her new apartment, she's aware of passing through a liminal space - a moment of desperate, aching opportunity. _You could be free_ , something tells her. _You could be free of him forever._

But after six years, she knows the price of that freedom - the dishonesty of it, the caveats. She'll be free, but only so long as she's content to sacrifice her identity, her potential. She'll be free to live the simple, stupid life of every other bug scuttling through the dirt. And Lex is neither simple, nor stupid. 

“You were born for greatness,” her father once told her, cupping the back of her neck as though setting the seal of an ancient curse. “It's in your blood.” 

In spite of everything, Lex agrees with him. Six years living on patents and sex and cocaine hasn't changed her mind. So she drives through the city - _his_ city, in all it's perverse ostentation - to the penthouse apartment he bought her, knowing full well it's bugged. It's right on the most beautiful edge of the waterfront, where the water glitters like liquid silver and the streets are lined with towering skyscrapers and bustling sidewalks, boutiques and bistros giving way to the marble gateways of stock brokerages, tech giants and law firms, and if you refuse to go another mile in any direction you could almost forget you're in Kansas. She parks her car in the designated spot, schleps her small collection of things to the private elevator, and refuses to be awed by the view. She can't tell if she's just numb from withdrawal, or if the simple act of reuniting with Lionel has forced her brain so deep into crisis that it's only allotting her a single emotion per day. 

The apartment comes furnished, which hardly interests her. Nothing about this interests her. She's all but dead from the neck down. She sets her suitcase at the foot of her bed, and places her box on the desk in the study. She doesn't bother to unpack - there's no point in trying to feel at home here, which is fine by her. Lex struggles to remember if she's ever felt at home anywhere. This is nothing but a dollhouse. 

There's no one around. She checks her phone, but there's no messages. She'd announced her return to no one; for one thing, she’s sure Lionel will be “debuting” her (so to speak) in his own way, and for another, there was no one she could think of who could be prevailed upon to care. What she wants right now, in this overdressed cavern of an apartment much more than company is to be profoundly, dangerously high. But she can't bear the thought of being at any greater disadvantage in this chess game, can't stomach the weakness of her own addicted body and mind. She forces herself to enjoy the sensation of pins and needles up her spine. She's sharper like this, even if it does render the whole world in aching, ugly clarity. 

Standing in the study with its ornate desk and its barren shelves, she feels numb and bored; irritated, slightly drunk with a desire to be anywhere else but here, be anyone else but who she is. Exhausted, but she’s well on her way to accepting the fact that cocaine has permanently crippled her ability to sleep. Her skin crawls so often that soon she thinks it may learn to walk away on its own. She pulls her hand away from her mouth where she's started to worry the scar on her lip, fingers whisking habitually over the clasp of her watch. She needs something - a quick search of the medicine cabinet finds it bare of anything lethal, and she doubts Lionel had the dignity to stock the liquor cabinet. In the end, she heads to the balcony to smoke. 

On her way through the kitchen, she catches sight of the gift box on the island countertop a second after she spots the bouquet of roses - conciliatory white among flushed, velvet red. A note in his handwriting with the words ‘welcome home’ penned unironically in expensive ink. 

She picks the vase up with two fingers pinched along the edge, holds it arm’s length from her like a dead rat in a trap. She walks across the room, opens the door to the balcony and flings it off without bothering to see where it lands. 

She shakes her hand as though to rid it of his poison, but she can already feel it sinking into the pads of her fingers. By the time she's back inside she can smell it permeating the room like his Clive Christian cologne. She lights a cigarette and lets the smoke drown out the smell. Some part of her supposes she ought to consider it a small victory that her father has finally deemed her woman enough to woo. The rest of her blows smoke at the ceiling, and contemplates torching the place. 

She's on her way to stamp out her cigarette in the sink when she remembers the gift box. It's dark green velvet, fixed with a shiny satin bow of the same color. The lid bears a logo, embossed in gold: Eldorado Jewelers. The address is printed right underneath. 

Lex picks it up, puts it in the inside pocket of her coat, and heads back down the elevator. It's close enough. She decides to walk. On her way out of the parking garage, her boots crunch through shards of broken glass, and grind rose petals into the pavement. 

Eldorado Jewelers is a squat storefront fit snug between a towering office building and a pizza place a few blocks from the Metropolis Museum of Art. Lex spots it from a distance: its showroom lit up so brightly that it even makes the formica in the sidewalk sparkle. It’s 2pm on a Wednesday, and the people that crowd the streets are either those with a generous schedule or those with nowhere else to be: stay-at-homers pushing strollers, nannies and au pairs out running errands, flocks of stock brokers and tech bros out to a late lunch, a few delinquents skipping school, and, of course, the city's homeless, who congregate on the sidewalk to talk and half heartedly wave empty coffee cups in the direction of anyone who passes. People step over and around them like they're trash someone left out on the curb. Lex sees several huddled in the few patches of autumn sun that can make it through the steel and concrete canopy. 

There's one such woman standing alone in a thin sliver of sunlight that's landed in the alley between Eldorado and the pizza place. At least, Lex thinks she's a woman - it's hard to tell if she's actually an adult, or just tall for her age. She's Asian, black hair coarse and bedraggled where it hangs into her face, and criminally thin, with long twiggy arms and legs. She’s wearing an enormous brown coat and pants that don't fit, gaping over her stick legs, tied on with what looks like a bungee cord belt and barely reaching halfway down her milky shins. She stands against the building like she's planning to take up a job as a drainage pipe, broadcasting an air of imminent hostility. The other vagrants give her a wide berth. 

Lex wouldn't give her a second thought except that as she nears, the woman’s head swivels around, and she begins to watch her. There's no intent to her gaze - she neither sizes Lex up, nor appears to recognize her, but simply watches, unblinking, not saying a thing. Her black eyes follow Lex as she walks towards her, then enters the store. Lex wonders, idly, if she's one of Lionel's, then realizes he's probably not smart enough to pull from Sherlock Holmes’ playbook. 

The woman behind the counter is exactly what Lex expected: young, attractive, and eager to please. 

“Welcome to Eldorado Jewelers,” she croons. “How can I help you today?” 

It's been almost three days since the last time Lex spoke to another human being. For some reason, this only occurs to her as she opens her mouth, working the words out of her throat like water from a dry well. 

“I was wondering about your return policy.” 

The woman blinks, but instantly changes tack, pressing her palms together in a conciliatory prayer. “Of course - if for any reason you're unsatisfied with one of our pieces, we can provide a return within the first thirty days. May I ask the problem?” 

“Ask it all you like,” Lex says, turning ‘the problem’ out of her pocket and placing it on the counter. 

In a move she ought to have predicted, the saleswoman gently lifts the lid, exposing Lex to precisely the garish sparkle she was hoping to avoid. It's a gaudy piece: an enormous princess cut diamond pendant shaped like a heart, resting in the center of a thick silver chain. It's almost comical to look at, and yet Lex feels like she just took a bump, heart racing, skin ice cold. 

“Oh my… and you're sure you'd like to return it?” 

Lex tries to smile, but it comes off more as a sneer. “I've never been more certain of anything in my life.” 

“Alright,” the woman says, looking at her like she's crazy. She pulls the box across the counter, lifts the necklace out, and checks a small slip of paper tucked beneath it. “It looks like this was only purchased last week, so you're well within the thirty day grace period. Would you like to exchange it?” 

“No.” Lex doesn’t bother looking at any of the display cases. The saleswoman seems disappointed. 

“Alright…” She picks up the piece of paper, types a code into her register. “Shall I return the amount to the card that was used?” 

“I'll take it in cash,” Lex says. Reparations are in order. 

The saleswoman purses her lips. “Now, ma'am - really for an exchange like this, I'm afraid I can't give you the value in cash. I'd be happy to refund it to the card, or give you store credit…” 

“Well, if you'd rather I take it to a pawn shop.” Lex puts her hand on the box, prepared to take it back. “Not that I imagine that'll reflect well on the integrity of your brand, but it's not as if reputation is something you need to worry about. It's not as though there's a multitude of other jewelry retailers in the area.” 

“There are three jewellery retailers on this block.” The saleswoman sounds resentful to have this pointed out, even when she's the one doing the pointing. 

“I stand corrected.” 

“Ma'am,” the saleswoman starts. Then, her gaze flickers to her register, and she must spot the name on the card - her eyes go wide and her mouth falls open in a way that's hardly polite. “I…” Lex sees her run the math in her head - sees her weigh protocol against keeping Lionel Luthor's business. 

She brightens up, and smiles. “Y’know, I think this time we can make an exception.” 

Lex feels a pustule of loathing burst in her chest. She watches the saleswoman count the bills out onto the glass countertop and fiddles with the clasp of her watch, brain automatically converting money to ounces. When she places the money in Lex's hand, it's a fight not to squirm. The paper feels slimy, sets the bugs under her skin writhing. 

“Have a nice day!” the saleswoman croons. 

Lex leaves without a goodbye, panic starting to pulse inside her. The crisp taste of autumn is bitter in her mouth as she walks back out of the store. The shadows of the buildings seem longer than they were twenty minutes ago, and the patches of sun have shifted. Now, a slice of gold falls across the marble edifice of the office building. The twiggy woman is standing there in her brown coat and her voluminous pants, looking like a small birch tree that's escaped its patch of dirt. Lex stops in front of her without planning to - a cold breeze makes her nose burn, and she stumbles to a stop, dabbing at it. No blood yet. No telling how long that'll last. 

When she looks up, the woman is staring at her, like she did before Lex went into the store. They stand there for a moment, staring at one another. Then, the bills clenched in Lex's pocket bound fist start to feel slick. 

She says, “Don't you have a collection basket like anyone else?” 

The twiggy woman shrugs with one shoulder. It's hard to make out through the mass of her coat. 

“I've got hands,” she says. Her voice is unexpectedly clear - as direct and unquestioning as her gaze. 

Lex jerks her chin. “Well?” 

The twiggy woman watches her for a moment - then, as incautiously as anything else she's done, she puts out her hand. It's not as dirty as Lex expects it to be. Her fingers are smudged, but not filthy, which must be quite a feat out here. There's something about the way she does it, too: not plaintive, with her fingers extended in a silent plea, but pointed, like she's extending it for a firm handshake. 

Lex isn't sure what possesses her to do it at first. It isn't charity. Nor, as many will later interpret it, is it destiny. Really, if anything, in the moment it's simply the closest thing she can manage to a hit of cocaine: a flippant, desperate thing to end her agony and keep her from accruing any more debt to Lionel. She reaches into her pocket, pulls out the fistful of dollars, and deposits $3,700 cash into the twiggy woman's outstretched hand. She doesn't need Lionel's gifts, or his money. She needs Lionel's last name. That costs more than enough on it’s own. 

Then, deed done, she turns, and begins walking back to the apartment. 

It's a block and a half before the twiggy woman catches up with her. Lex barely hears her footfalls, starts at the sound of her voice. 

“Why did you give me this.” 

None of her questions sound like questions. Lex turns, a little annoyed to be stalled this close to the crosswalk. At this rate she's going to have to wait through another light cycle. 

“I don’t want it.” 

“It's too much,” the twiggy woman says, thrusting it back at her in one big green tangle. 

Lex makes no move to accept it. “I'm sure you'll make do.” 

The twiggy woman lifts her lip in a snarl. “Take it back. I don't want to owe you anything.” 

This, to Lex's surprise, is a statement almost comforting in its familiarity. 

“You don't,” she says. 

“You can't buy me with this.” 

“I wasn’t trying to. What you do with the money is your business. And, for that matter, of no interest to me.” The lights have cycled. Lex sees the crosswalk blink again. “If you don't want it, get rid of it. What do I care? Now, if you'll excuse me.” 

She crosses the crosswalk. 

The twiggy woman follows her. 

Lex keeps walking, determined to ignore her. They walk on for several blocks, the twiggy woman always several paces behind her, which is somehow more ominous than the alternative. Lex can feel her stare boring into the back of her skull. After ten minutes, vague annoyance and paranoia have fermented into an absolute fury with herself - this is what impulse gets her. No good deed goes unpunished. She wonders if she'll be forced to defend herself. 

She's so distracted, in fact, with planning her counterattack, that she walks right past the liquor store she'd planned to visit on her way home. She pauses some twenty feet past it, faltering - the urge to soothe herself with some illicit substance is a powerful one. But then she locks eyes again with the woman, and a flight of fear goes through her. She grimaces and puts her head down, reaching into her pocket for her cigarettes. She flicks the flint wheel of her lighter, wrestling with her panic, and brushes shoulders with a stranger a little harder than she means to. 

The stranger shouts, startling her. She nearly drops her lighter. 

“You! Watch where you're going!” 

The stranger is a man, whose sunken cheeks and long beard place his age somewhere between Rip Van Winkle and Father Time. He has one cloudy blind eye, the other red-rimmed, the sickly green color of chlorine glass. Every time he speaks, it exposes his craggy teeth, brown as mud and stinking of rot. One look at Lex and he instantly invokes a whole host of words that belong in an outdated volume of the White Bigot’s Dictionary. 

“Walking around here like you own the place… Luthor always making--” He invokes a slur she hasn't heard since middle school. “--like you think you can act however you want.” A few more epithets come spewing out of him, then: he shrieks them almost ecstatically, combines them in new and creative ways, each one jabbing like a needle. 

It's probably not the smartest thing, but Lex blows a jet of smoke in his face. 

“Get some new material,” she suggests. And then, gut churning with dread, she walks on. 

“Bitch,” the old man spits, like he's hexing her. “Whore.” 

And then, like clockwork he turns on the twiggy woman. Like Lex, she steadfastly ignores him. He fires off insults like a gatling gun, pursuing them at an unsteady weave. Then, he spots a few rogue bills peering out of the twiggy woman's pocket. 

“Whatchu got?” he jabs as they pass. “Whatchu got? Moneybags. Little rich bitch handing out money, whatchu got? Whatchu got?” 

His skeletal hand closes around Lex's arm with a terrifying, unexpected strength. He yanks her off her feet, spit flecking his thin lips. “Gimme!” he shrieks. “Gimme, you ugly--” 

He screams as Lex grinds her cigarette into the leathery skin of his hand. He jerks, but doesn't let go, threatening to drag her out into the street. He's bruising her arm - she plants her heels against the sidewalk, heart hammering. But before she can slug him or check for witnesses, the twiggy woman dives on him in a flurry of limbs, tackling him into the street. 

Cars skid, horns blaring as the woman slams the man's head into the asphalt. He yells, bites her thumb. Lex doesn’t see her flinch, even at the first plentiful spurt of blood. Instead, she pulls it loose and drives her elbow into his eye, making him gag and twist beneath her. She wrestles him, keeps him under her by pinning him with her long, slender legs, and begins punching him with a strength and precision Lex can't help but admire. 

Her heart’s still pounding, and she takes a step back. A few vagrants across the street have spotted the fight and stand at the ready, apparently deciding whether or not to join in. The old man's begun screaming and cursing again, and the twiggy woman keeps beating on him, paying no mind to cars that swerve around them, the cluster of bystanders gathering on the sidewalk. 

Lex hears sirens in the distance, sees a gym rat mumbling into his cellphone. For the first time in weeks she feels a spotlight on her. The twiggy woman rears back her fist to deliver another blow, and Lex catches it, yanking her upright. The old man doesn’t follow, lying in the street, moaning and spitting, rocking his bloodied head from side to side. 

“Walk,” Lex orders, and they do, quickly, moving through the tightening cluster of onlookers and hurrying down the street. A few blocks later, two cop cars whizz past them, sirens echoing down the tight corridor of buildings, lights dying the world in shades of red and blue. 

She lets the twiggy woman up to her apartment because it seems more precarious to leave her on the street: a lucid witness to something Lex would rather not be arrested for today. Her hand is soaked with blood where the old man bit her. It drips slowly in the elevator, and on the hardwood floor as Lex leads her to the sink. 

The woman makes a tourniquet out of one of the dish towels without asking. She gazes around the apartment with a vague interest, then pads into the bathroom. When she emerges, almost an hour later, her hand is bandaged. She's taken a shower without asking. Lex, who's spent this time smoking and staring out the window, waiting for the cops to beat down her door, can't find the will to blame her. After all, she's still wearing her own clothes. 

The woman comes into the kitchen. She and Lex stare at one another for a while. Then, she puts her uninjured hand in her pocket, and pulls out the money. She moves to place it on the counter. 

“Keep it,” Lex tells her. 

The woman pauses. She lingers there a second, hand outstretched, the money pinched between her fingers. Then, finally, she pulls it back, and puts it in her pocket. 

“You rich?” she asks. 

Lex shrugs, gesturing vaguely to the apartment with her still-burning cigarette. “In some ways.” 

“Only way that matters.” 

Lex snorts, takes a drag and exhales. “Spoken like the poor.” 

She takes another drag, and silence settles between them once again. 

“What's your name?” the woman asks. 

“Lex. What's yours?” 

“Mercy,” the woman says. 

“You fight well,” Lex says. 

“I have to,” says Mercy. And then, after a moment: “I like to. I like hurting people like that. It's what they deserve.” 

Lex is hard pressed to disagree. She regards her carefully: tall, but not taller than Lex; slim as a knife and deadly, Lex can tell by the way she holds herself. Direct and incurious, obedient but not mindless. In a strange way, Lex almost likes her. 

She doesn't have to offer, but she does. 

“Do you work?” 

“No.” 

“Would you like to?” 

Mercy's face hardens. “Doing what?” 

“Oh, nothing too complex. It occurs to me you'd make a fairly competent bodyguard.” She sips smoke, then weaves it through the air. “I'm in the market for one.” 

“You some kind of celebrity or something?” 

“Or something.” 

“What do I have to do? Follow you around?” 

“Nothing you haven't done already. You'll find I'm a big girl. I just don't have eyes in the back of my head.” 

“So you need a second head.” 

Lex hums. An inelegant metaphor, but not wrong. In chess terms, she needs a queen to her king, as it were - unprecedented, unexpected, omnidirectional, unpredictable. She'd been thinking that for a while, with no plans one way or the other. 

“So… what?” Mercy asks, leaning back, folding her arms. “I watch you, you pay me?” 

“You hurt those who are deserving.” 

“Sounds like horseshit.” 

Lex shrugs. “Suit yourself.” 

Mercy frowns a little deeper. Lex sees the fingers of her injured hand flex. 

“How much?” 

Lex tells her, and her eyes bug. 

“Per _year?_ ” 

“Per month.” 

“Horseshit.” 

“I believe in commensurate wages to the task at hand.” 

She expects Mercy to balk at this - or to make another declaration that she must be exaggerating. But instead, she stands very still, clearly weighing the offer, taking into account all that Lex has implied but that she can't possibly know. 

“When would I start?” 

“How about now?” 

“Am I supposed to watch you all the time?” 

“Until I hire other security staff.” 

“Where am I supposed to sleep?” 

“I maintain a lifestyle that strictly rejects overnight entertainment that I can't share a bed with.” Lex gestures across the room to the open door. “A guest bedroom is an offense to my tastes. It's yours.” 

“You gonna take that out of my pay?” 

“No.” 

Mercy stands there a second, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Then, after a lengthy pause she says, “Yeah. Okay.” She looks around the kitchen. “I don't have to cook for you or anything, right? Or do your laundry?” 

“I'm perfectly capable of doing my own laundry.” 

“Okay.” Mercy shifts again. “Do I gotta be awake when you're awake?” 

“In most cases.” The cigarette has burned down to the tips of Lex's fingers. She grinds it out on a plate resting on the counter. “I don't sleep much.” 

Again, Lex expects some kind of reaction - some variety of griping or rebuke. But instead Mercy just shrugs. 

“‘sokay,” she says. “I don't either.” 

* * *

Lex is aware that she doesn’t have what could be described as a ‘normal’ reaction to guns. At thirty-five, Lex has been held at gunpoint probably no less than seventy-three times, ninety-six if you’re counting hallucinations, magical or imaginary weapons, and government holidays. Nowadays, she finds it less of an occasion and more of an annoyance. Clara has her hands up like they’ve walked into a bank robbery. Lex’s remain in her pockets; uncaring, unthreatened. 

It’s all a balancing act now as she tries to figure out what they’ve just walked into, and how to get them back out. She flexes her fingers and tries to focus on the cold, dead math of it, the transactionary facts, and _not_ on the bitter pulse of outrage, the hot, herniated lump of betrayal throbbing against her back teeth as Mercy looks at her like she’s other people. 

Apart from the gun, there’s no proof that they know anything. In this room, there are twenty-two defensive countermeasures (not including the gun), most of which have been designed with Clara in mind; if Mercy has access to all these as they exist in her universe and has a desire to do them harm, Clara's useless to her. But then, Clara isn't Superwoman in this universe. In fact, if Kara is anything to go by, Superwoman may not now nor have ever been her enemy - at least not in any serious capacity, petty insults hardly qualify - which begs the question of which countermeasures that leaves. 

She tries to remember which of them was installed in her first three years B.C. (Before Clara), but quickly realizes there were none. The first renovation was her treat to herself after Lionel died - forty new floors on LexCorp Tower West, and all of LexCorp Tower East, two fresh new additions to her empire that he had never touched and would never live to see. She’s added another forty floors since then, too - which doesn’t leave her much to go on. She thinks she can probably assume she’ll have added the countermeasures intended for human intruders. That puts her between three and thirty, and that's only going by the physical limits of the space itself. Still, it’s possible that if she’s never been at war with Superwoman, the Kryptonite, radiation, and red sun-centric features have been removed. And that puts Clara back in play. 

By the metrics of _The Art of War_ , she has shockingly little to work with: her own knowledge of the space is purely hypothetical if not outright fictitious, and an obedient Amazon with a handgun probably matches (if not outclasses) Clara in terms of firepower. She’s smarter than Mercy, that goes without saying, but without the buffer of her goodwill, she’s not confident in her ability to beat her in a contest of strength and martial prowess. 

And beyond that, there’s her own virulent rage to consider - the venomous, powerful fury that races through her blood for every second that Mercy looks at her like a stranger. Mercy, who really is the closest thing to a life partner that she has - who has slept in the room next to Lex’s for thirteen years, stood at her side through every hostile takeover, thwarted every assassination attempt, hired every member of her security team and vetted every member of her personal staff. Mercy, who drove Lex home after she murdered her father and said nothing at all, but emanated a powerful aura of approval. Mercy, who glows with silent pride when Lex announces every bold new initiative; who looks at every obnoxious member of the Metropolis press like she’d like nothing better than to flay them alive; who taught Lex how to fist fight by flickering candle light in the kitchen of the apartment in New Troy when cocaine withdrawals made it impossible to sleep. 

Lex fights the automatic surge of associated memory. She’s been betrayed before. She knows better. Pack it up, she tells herself. Put it in a box. Sentiment is a potent toxin, a crippling, fatal condition. Sentiment will kill her faster than Mercy can. A pulse of fury at the thought, the sight of the gun. God, she wants nothing more than to rip her apart. 

But no - all warfare is based on deception. And Mercy’s given her the room for that in spades. 

God, it’s been a long time since she’s had to invoke Sun Tzu. She grinds her fingernails into the bruise to her pride. _Be cold_ , she tells herself. _Be empty. Be diamond._ This is a game of chicken - roulette. There’s no proof they know anything yet. No need to give them anything they don’t already have. 

“Little late for a visit,” Mercy says, hands in her pockets. 

Lex’s nostrils flare, but she stays where she is. “I admit, if I’d realized we were going to start the night with treason, I would’ve reached out to your secretary. I seem to have left my own gun at home.” 

Mercy knocks her chin towards Clara. “What do you call that?” 

Lex smiles, not very nicely. “Air Force One.” 

At the first mention of treason, Hope’s brow creases just so, a hint of hesitation in her face - she’s holding the gun steady, but the safety’s still on. Weakness. Uncertainty. Seems Lex and Mercy are at a similar loss for loyal troops. Hope doesn’t like this, and she wears it openly on her face. But that Clara could be relied upon to take a little initiative. She’s definitely faster than Hope’s trigger finger. But she stays where she is, not even taking the bait of Lex’s jibe - she apparently takes the order not to move very seriously. 

Lex tips her head, weighing her options. She keeps her voice at a low purr - both a threat and a question. “Really, Mercy, if you were going to shoot me, you certainly waited until the least convenient possible time.” 

Mercy narrows her eyes and takes a step to the side. Her polished patent leather oxfords gleam as she crosses the floor, flat heels clicking against the tile - she prowls as slow as an alley cat. 

“I’m not going to shoot you,” Mercy says, like she sees something in her and she’s thinking very hard about what it means. “Hope is.” 

“Oh, please. As though you’d let anyone else shoot me when you could just as well do it yourself.” 

Mercy’s scrutiny intensifies - her gaze is an obsidian knife whet to an incomparably fine point, and it slices into Lex on a cellular level. Lex scrutinizes her right back. She’s exactly the same, of course - as unchanging and inflexible as gravity - but different; it’s the way she wears the power Lex gave her, she thinks, how naturally it seems to suit her. It’s in the steady sharpness of her gaze, the easy confidence of her stride, the exquisite tailoring of her suit. 

“Maybe so,” Mercy says, at last. 

Her suspicion is as blunt as everything else about her. 

Behind her, Lex feels Clara shift ever so slightly, like she’s forgone breathing up until now just in case it violated the no moving rule. Without being told, she - unbelievably - follows Lex’s lead and plays dumb. Her glasses are still off, but she might as well have them on; without even looking at her, Lex can hear her shrink and stoop ever so slightly, wilting into a smaller, less offensive shape. It’s her _Who, me?_ Routine, her Professional Wallflower impression, as Vaudevillian as ever and just as potent. 

“Gosh,” she says, just on this side of panicked and breathy, “I would really love it if we could just not shoot anybody today, y’all. I-- What the heck’s going on?” 

“Don’t move,” Hope reminds her. 

“I’m not!” Clara says. “Jeez, Hope, I’m standing right here not moving, just praying that at some point y’all are gonna help me with the _why_ of it all.” 

Hope frowns a little deeper, pursing her lips. She shakes her head just a little. 

“ _Agápi mou_ ,” she mutters. “It sounds like her.” 

But Mercy’s a falcon on a rabbit, and she can’t be distracted by anything as commonplace Clara’s shy schoolgirl routine. She’s staring at Lex like she could look through her, readying her strike. When she opens her mouth, Lex can almost see her tuck her wings and dive. 

“You look like you,” Mercy says, something deadly sliding over her tongue. “And you sound like you. But you’re not you. You’re something else.” 

Maybe they know more than Lex assumed. 

She ignores the percussive jolt in her chest, the lurch as she swerves to compensate - _give them nothing_ , she tells herself. No reaction, no vulnerability. She lets the faintest filaments of surprise and confusion feather over her face, and the rest - the wild spike of panic, the scramble to find something, anything lethal within arm’s reach - she restrains in the same box as her sentiment. Deny, deny, deny. Look innocent, look unknowing. _If your opponent is near, make her think you are far. If your opponent is superior to you in strength, evade her._

“I would just _love_ to know what the hell is going on,” Lex says, as calmly as she can manage. 

“You’re not you,” Mercy says. “The bioscans think you are. But they're wrong.” 

Lex squints at her, then makes an attempt at disbelieving laughter. “Forgive the cliche, I realize this violates one of the cardinal rules of being held at gunpoint - but are you _clinically insane?_ ” 

“No,” Mercy says, and dammit, she’s gaining confidence, momentum, and Lex doesn’t know how. “You’re not Kal Kent,” she tells Clara. “And you’re no Lex Luthor.” 

Clara makes a disbelieving noise that borders on comical. “I’m sorry, what?” 

Lex stays cool, getting colder. “How do you figure?” _Deny_ , she tells herself, _deny_. But ice is crawling through her veins, and she could swear Mercy can smell it. She paces closer, and though she’s a good few inches shorter than Lex, it doesn’t feel like she is. 

“It’s been three years since I used the email address you sent that message to.” 

“That’s your evidence?” Lex scoffs, trying not to kick herself. Of _course_ she wouldn’t use that address anymore - she’s the damn CEO of LexCorp. Why didn’t that occur to her before now? _Stupid. Sloppy._ “The damn thing autofilled. I didn’t realize a simple typo would qualify as sufficient evidence that I’d been - what, Mercy? _Possessed?_ ” She goes out of her way to make it sound laughable. 

“It wasn’t nearly as suspicious as you sending LexCorp a copy of the virus at all.” 

This time, Lex does laugh, cold and unyielding. “Oh, _forgive me_ , how out of character for me to want to involve you.” 

Mercy’s always been easily embarrassed - the outrage that pulls her brows in tight and bitter was something Lex was counting on. But her reaction doesn’t move past that. She remains stolid, targeted as a missile, and Lex curses her own abilities in talent acquisition. Mercy is, as always, perfect as this, as cunning here as she would be in any other interrogation. 

“You don’t involve LexCorp with anything to do with national security,” Mercy says. “That was the agreement we made when you created Cadmus. So why did you send it to me and not to them?” 

A spindle of adrenaline threads its way along the knobs of Lex’s spine, and she feels her adrenaline kick on, push to start. 

“I didn’t want to involve them,” she lies. _Cadmus?_ As in ‘king of Thebes, slayer of dragons’ Cadmus? She can’t imagine what the significance of that could be, but she can appreciate a decent name when she hears it. “I thought LexCorp's facilities better suited to the task.” 

“And why come in person?” Mercy continues, as though Lex hasn't said anything at all. “It's a germ, we could've emailed about it. If you're that dead set on babysitting it, Cadmus is the obvious choice. You've got your own electron microscopes, what do you need mine for? 

“Unless,” and her tongue a surgeon’s knife, “you didn't know that. Or anything else I just said. Because you’re not really you.” 

Lex fights to breathe evenly. 

“Interesting theory,” she says. 

“You’re wearing that body, but you still hold yourself like a coward,” Mercy continues. “You look _brittle._ ” 

“And there’s the fact that you can’t stand each other,” Hope says, slowly. “You’ve been fighting non-stop since this morning.” 

Lex feels Clara swallow hard. 

“So,” Mercy says, words pulled taut across her teeth, gaze intense. “Let’s try this again: I don’t think you are who you say you are. Where. Is. Lex. Luthor.” 

Well. This certainly has spiraled out of control. 

Lex hasn’t paid too much mind to the danger of being _caught._ The possibility has seemed - up until this moment - remote. After all, it’s an impossible situation they’re in. Sure, to be exposed well and truly would cost Lex the only footholds she has: her name, her wealth, her independence. The presidency. But who in their right mind would jump to such a conclusion? And who would believe them, if they did? 

She hadn’t thought of Mercy, and that’s her own fault. She’s never been forced to account for Mercy as a potential adversary - never been in so unfortunate a position as to lose her enduring loyalty. But in all the time Mercy has been her lone ally, she’s seen the true color of Lex’s life, crazy and kaleidoscopic. She may not rival Lex in intelligence, but she’s shared in most of the experiences of her adult life. It took Lex less than fifteen minutes to figure this one out. Even factoring in a 4800% markup, giving Mercy twelve full hours to figure it out was overly generous. 

She’s running the numbers, strategizing - she’s running the numbers and they aren’t good. Ice is solidifying along her gums and between her teeth, and some rogue part of her has the nerve to be surprised, to see the gun and Mercy and think _no, she wouldn’t_. 

Idiotic. Sentiment’s killing her, sure enough - as sure as any poison, slow and painful. Mercy’s like everyone else, she should know that by now. A human animal guided by selfish instinct. Lex allowed Clara to convince her that there was something special between them, that Mercy knew her better than anyone. And she does, of course. That’s the problem. And now, Lex and Clara are poised on the knife’s edge. All because Lex failed to foresee this, failed to learn from a lifetime of lessons in distrust. 

Her mind loops in and out of coils of self loathing, jumping between active worst case scenarios. As she sees it, they have two options now: submit to their fate whatever it may be and however it may limit (or wholly prevent) their ability to return home; or eliminate both Hope and Mercy before this has a chance to spread. 

So, realistically… _one_ option. 

Lex regulates her breathing. She tests the floor beneath her feet - paneled, like her own office. Mercy’s on the warpath, and that’s Lex’s sole advantage. So she feigns ignorance, and sweeps the path to the trap clear, hoping that Clara will read her mind, but not counting on it. This is the nearest she’s been to a gun since she landed in this universe. She plans to make use of that fact. 

“Mercy,” she says, setting the bait out very calmly. “I’m more than happy to allow for the possibility of you being either deaf, dumb, _or_ blind - but the implication that you’ve suddenly become all three is a bit galling.” 

That Mercy has a gun is no surprise at all. She yanks it out of her belt without fanfare and cocks it. Violence is, as always, the most casual thing she’s capable of. She jockeys her shoulders like a runner at the starting line, then aims at Lex's forehead. 

“Whoa! Whoa whoa whoa!” Clara barks. 

“Where is the _real_ Lex Luthor, you bodysnatcher.” 

It’s the viciousness behind the word that makes her grin. It’s _funny._ “Bodysnatcher?” she repeats, relishing the way Mercy’s face contorts with anger - she sees the smallest flinch that belies her humiliation. She’s always been so unphased by anyone’s criticism. Anyone but hers. “How very _pulp fiction_ of you.” 

It must be the way Mercy’s finger caresses the trigger that drives Clara to action - Lex supposes it was too much to hope that she would be able to restrain herself until the trap had been sprung. In a second, she’s gone from hovering just behind Lex, playing the part of shrinking violet, to shielding her, shy disguise cast off like the tacky costume it is. She doesn’t need the goonsuit, Lex realizes - it’s a part of her. It’s in her posture and the breadth of her mountainous shoulders, the width of her barrel chest and her towering height. That she manages to vanish into any crowd at all is a superhuman feat in itself. In motion, she’s unmistakably a titan. She pushes Lex behind her. 

“Enough,” she says, hand out. “ _Enough._ Put the gun down.” 

“Idiot,” Lex hisses, trying to push her back. Her blood pulses with anger, exasperation - and she sees the instant confirmation on Mercy’s face. 

“Told you it was both of them,” she says. 

Hope doesn’t nod - but the hesitation leaves her. 

The trap springs with nothing to show for it, but they’ve forfeited the luxury of waiting any longer. Mercy’s within reach. Lex’s hands are free, and she intends to keep them that way. So she lets her move first, a single step forward. Then she lunges. 

She stomps down on Mercy’s instep - Mercy catches her hand before she strikes her in the nose, releasing her stabilizer hand to grab Lex’s wrist. Her grip is strong, but Lex is used to Clara’s Kryptonian strength and barely feels it. She rips her arm to the side and it flings them into close proximity. Lex uses the momentum to aim a muleish kick at Mercy’s knee, but she whips it out of the way just in time. Lex’s foot hits the floor and she skids, unstable in her four-inch heels. Mercy kicks forward to economize on it and Lex uses her captive hand as leverage yanking her off-balance. Polished oxfords squeak over the tile. With her free hand, Lex grabs for the gun, holding it away from her. 

The blast of a gunshot catches her by surprise - she didn’t feel Mercy’s tendons squeeze, didn’t hear the bullet whip past her. In an irresistible moment of instinct, she whips around, searching for the source of the sound, and finds Clara with her arm outstretched, hand tightly closed in a fist. She opens her fingers, and Hope’s bullet falls with a soft _tink_ ling sound to the floor. 

Lex has barely processed that when, in the span of a second, Mercy kicks her so hard in the stomach that she feels an ominous bite of acid at the back of her throat. The aftertaste of dinner coats her tongue and her knees go weak. She’s almost on her knees when Mercy surges forward, and Lex lets the force carry her over - she holds onto Mercy’s wrist and Mercy holds hers, and Lex bends backwards, planting a foot in her gut and following her, momentum sending them head over foot. Lex keeps the upper hand for all of a second, landing on top of her, but Mercy’s long, twiggy legs send them somersaulting a second time. Lex grabs for the gun, and Mercy pins her on her back, hand like a vice around her throat. She slams Lex’s head back against the tiles and Lex sees stars for the second time in 24 hours. 

Mercy’s grip isn’t as strong as Clara’s, but it’s as ruthless as the rest of her. There’s a struggle taking place just past Lex’s periphery, and she can’t turn her head enough to see it. She can’t breathe and the edges of her vision are already getting dark. 

But Mercy’s left her with a free hand. That’s a mistake Lex doesn’t intend to give her time to regret. 

She jerks her knee up _hard_ , driving it into Mercy’s kidney. At the same time she socks her in the nose with one hand, and yanks the gun free with the other, grabbing it by the barrel and using Mercy's spasm of pain to get it through her fingers. She drives the butt up against Mercy’s chin, sending her up and off her again, and scrambles to her feet, leaping over Mercy’s leg as she kicks out at her like a bullwhip. She turns, finds Hope and Clara grappling - steadies the gun, aims, shoots. Amazons might be strong, but they’re not bulletproof. She strikes Hope in the shin and relishes the burst of blood, the shout of pain. At the slightest give, Clara yanks her off her feet and tosses her the length of the room. She goes skidding across the floor, leaving a streak of blood behind her. 

Clara turns to Lex, and they lock eyes. 

“Time to go,” says Clara. 

Lex couldn’t possibly agree more. 

Mercy scrambles to her feet. Clara dives across the space left between her and Lex - in a single motion, she tucks Lex to her chest and somersaults out of the way of another bullet. Hope’s taking aim at them from the floor, teeth grit. Clara lands on her feet, Lex in her arms, and launches towards the window just as Mercy drives her foot down against a panel in the floor. Clara tucks Lex to her, her hand shockingly gentle along the back of her head; Lex braces, and then thick shards of polarized glass explode around them. A spiderweb of lasers appears in the space they were just in a second before, and Clara rockets out into the night air. 

“I told you someone was going to hear us this morning!” Clara says. 

“Very actionable criticism, Kent!” Lex shouts over the blast of wind, holding the gun tight. “Thank you _so much_ for your input!” 

Mercy must have had security on standby. As Clara passes the roof, they’re strafed by a hailstorm of bullets and lasers. She curls protectively around Lex, and Lex feels an unwilling, poorly timed pulse of surprised gratitude. There’s shouting - a quick glance says there’s over twenty guards on the roof, several with laser cannons and shock rifles. Clara spirals, several shots missing her by mere centimeters, and climbs fast enough that it sucks the air from Lex’s mouth, adrenaline looping giddily in her stomach. The lights of the city are shrinking beneath them, the ceiling of clouds beckoning. 

“What do we do now?” Clara asks. Lex can barely hear her over the roar in her ears. “They’re gonna tell people, Lex!” 

“Tell them _what?_ That I'm a pod person?” 

“Okay, you haven’t been on this side of Mercy when she’s trying to protect you, so I’m going to give you the inside scoop - I would be less worried if _Darkseid_ were onto us.” 

“Protect me? She's trying to _kill me!_ ” 

“Yeah - because she thinks you did something to _her_ Lex.” 

Lex is about to reply when movement beneath them catches her eye. 

“Worry later,” she suggests. “The witch has unleashed her flying monkeys.” 

Clara follows her gaze and hisses something that almost passes for a curse under breath. Beneath them, LexCorp security toughs strapped with jetpacks are rising from the rooftops. A red ribbon of laser fire _zing_ s past them. Clara banks and the troops follow, gaining with surprising speed. 

They head for cloud cover as security fires lasers like spears - ice blankets them, freezing the breath in Lex’s lungs, and then they burst through, plunging face first into the sea of moonlight. The air is desperately thin and cold, and Clara zigs and zags, narrowly avoiding the lasers that pierce the sky like bolts of lightning firing in the wrong direction. Lex checks the magazine of her gun - full but for one round, high-capacity. She’s got thirty-two bullets left. 

The rocketeers burst through the cloud like a flock of gun wielding birds. With line of sight, their shots come closer to meeting their mark. Clara dips, weaves, banks and dives. Lex secures the magazine and props up on her shoulder; she shoots, misses once, then pegs one of their oncoming attackers in the arm. The woman shouts and loses her gun. She shoots again, and it _pings_ off a jetpack. Shoots again, and the jetpack dents, smokes and whines. The rocketeer manages to eject from it just before it combusts in a ball of fire, throwing up her parachute like a handkerchief. 

But they aren’t all as dumb as they look. Clara zooms right, and just as Lex is beginning to think they’ve been going in one direction a fraction of a second longer than normal, a rocketeer bursts up out of the clouds coming straight towards them. 

“Oh, cheese and _rice_ \--” 

Clara ducks out of the way just in time, plunging several feet, then looping upwards again. But they’ve got a few out in front of her, and she’s forced to dive out of the way twice more, struggling to avoid both the gunfire from behind her and the rocketeers coming straight for her. She fires off with her heat vision, and Lex smells burnt ozone - but there are too many, and they're too mobile. Clara could dispatch them with ease if she had her hands free, but her hands are full of Lex, who can’t get a good shot with her ducking and weaving every two seconds. 

A fourth rocketeer launches up through the clouds directly in their path, and two laser bolts _zing_ from behind them, one barely missing Clara's right hip, the other warping the air just to the left of her shoulder. They're hemmed in. They’re not going to be able to avoid a direct confrontation this time and if Clara can't free her hands to grapple her... 

“Throw me,” Lex says, the solution coming to her all at once. 

“What?!” 

“ _Throw me!_ ” Lex yells. 

There’s no time to explain. Once again, she’s forced to vainly hope that Clara will cotton on without it. She sees disbelief flicker across her face - fear, hesitation - but it disappears a second before it’ll be too late to act. She feels Clara’s well-muscled arms coil, winding up, and then she hurls her into the air, straight up. 

The sky is liquid as Lex hurdles up through it. The air is so cold it’s tasteless, oxygen so thin it catches in her mouth like wet tissue. She feels her stomach stretch, pendulously heavy inside her. The moon’s one blind eye stares at her, sickly silver as she tips backwards. She's holding the gun so tight her knuckles hurt. She tips all the way back, almost in slow motion, following her nose up and over, and then - then she’s falling straight back down. 

The rocketeers are tiny beneath her when she starts her descent. She fires - takes out one, two, three, piercing the fuel tanks strapped to their back. Two don’t get free of their jetpacks in time and go down, shrieking and in flames. She sees Clara bat another two away like flies. The rocketeers look up - they see Lex now, but it’s too late. She shoots another in the chest, spots the other beneath them. She crosses her arms at the wrist and lets her momentum drive her into their throat at full force. She feels the hot puff of the breath that goes out of them, sees their eyes go glassy on impact. Then they roll, losing control of their flight. She grabs, blindly, and manages to snag their vinyl shoulder strap with her free hand, and they go tumbling, somersaulting through the clouds. 

She bursts through the other side and her stomach is knotted like a cherry stem in her mouth. Metropolis glows beneath them, lights of the city glittering like diamonds scattered over dark blue velvet, but Lex and the rocketeer roll and whirl, and within seconds she's lost track of which way is up. 

She digs into the strap clenched between her fingers even as the rocketeer gets their bearings. They kick and there’s nowhere for her to go - at the last second she manages to jam her gun hand under the opposite shoulder strap. That keeps her on as they slam their booted foot into her chest, hard enough that it rips her fingers free of the other strap. She keeps hanging on by her gun hand, though her wrist screams in protest. The jetpack, too, gives an ominous whine, clearly not built for two people. Lex grabs for the strap again, this time getting a better hold, and the rocketeer grabs for her. They wrestle, Lex struggling for purchase, trying to find leverage. 

Then, a flash of red catches her eye - a laser, no doubt fired by one of the rocketeer's compatriots, darting through the clouds straight towards them. A split second of indecision - the rocketeer rears back to kick her again. 

She lets go. 

The laser hits. The explosion is instant - catastrophic. The rocketeer shrieks, igniting in a fireball. Lex shields her face. The heat is concussive, immense, blistering. It blows her back and then she's falling, tumbling - down, down, down. 

It takes a second too long for her to get her bearings. She's in free fall - no rocketeers near her or below her. She rushes to calculate her rate of descent - she’d put them at maybe 1200 feet in the air, which at terminal velocity gives her about 37.5 seconds before she hits the ground. She spins, trying to turn herself against the force of the wind towards the ground. The wind rips at her, twisting and turning her, whipping her around and around with tremendous speed. She has to get oriented - if she hits the ground there’s a 0.01% chance of survival, but that's better than zero. She spread eagles her arms and legs to increase drag, but her body's well aware of how fast she's going, the air rushing past her, the wind screaming in her ears. She finally manages to turn her body earthward and scans the horizon - no marshes nearby and no snow, so she'll need a tree, or a clump of them. Where is she going to find a forest in Kansas? 

She’s trying not to imagine the sound both her legs are going to make when she breaks them - and then a laser blast sizzles past her, and she's reminded of why she's up here in the first place. Twenty seconds and counting, the ground sprinting towards her, and they're still trying to kill her, as if impact alone won’t do that job plenty well. 

It's the desire to force them to regret their own stupidity that drives her over onto her back again. She spots them above her, though their forms are muddy through her reflexive tears, and it's hard to make them out against the black curtain of the sky. They keep firing, missing her by inches, and she fires back a full four times before she realizes that the wind is sending her bullets arcing off in every direction but the ones she wants. It's like target practice in a tornado. Twenty bullets and fourteen seconds left. The goons send down another volley of laserfire, diving after her, and she follows the red trails their bolts leave behind as she aims. Fires twice more, and she sees one go tumbling. Another loses their gun. Ten seconds now, and she's still on her back. Nine… eight… 

Clara’s big, hot hand closes over hers, and she finds herself dangling in her grip, slowed so quickly that it should pull her arm out of her socket. It doesn't, and somehow, relief beats out her curiosity. When she looks up into Clara's beautiful face, she thinks this must be what people mean when they refer to something, in reverent tones, as a religious experience. 

“You okay?” Clara asks, and she does a little maneuver - a scoop and a dip and a toss - that lands Lex back in the cradle of her arms. 

“Nice catch,” Lex says, trying very hard to sound unimpressed. 

From the way Clara smiles - bafflingly beautiful, slow and sleepy as a sunrise, all dimples and quiet confidence - it doesn’t seem like she's taking her seriously. 

She must have dove past the rocketeers to catch her. Lex glances over her head and finds three of the remaining rocketeers descending on them, spins her head to find her pursuers still bearing down on them and a sixth racing in from Clara’s opposite side, closing in fast. 

“Might need to get creative,” Clara says and Lex nods, the idea occurring to her at the same time. 

It’s the sixth who’s closest - mere feet and closing, hurdling at them at top speed. Clara’s hand closes around Lex’s again and she tosses her in an arc like a human yo-yo. Lex arcs her legs, extending with the full force of the throw, and drives her heels into the rocketeer’s chin with a bloody _thwack_. Clara loops her around, and Lex lands with her arms around her neck, chest pressed to her broad back, and the rocketeer goes flying, spiraling through the air. 

The two rocketeers who were pursuing Lex are straight above of them, and as Clara looks up to face them, Lex feels her breathe in, inhaling deep - then, just as the contingent grows near enough that Lex can hear the hum of their weapons, she breathes out. A jet of icy air shoots between her lips, blasting the oncoming toughs right in the face, and they go pinwheeling through the air, shouting and shielding themselves. Lex aims and shoots - holds tight to avoid slipping. The metal of the jetpacks are brittle from the cold and they both go up in spouts of flame. Above her, the remaining three rocketeers begin to fire. One shot slices so close to Lex’s cheek that she feels a white hot streak blister across her skin. She cries out - short and sharp - and Clara reacts immediately. Lex barely gets her gun arm back around her neck in time as she bends backwards and loops out of the way, the next few shots zipping past them. 

“Is now a weird time to mention that I miss your warsuit?” 

“Yes!” Lex snaps, clinging to her. Her legs are dangling, toes pendulous where they hang down towards the earth, and for the first time all night, she’s glad she changed out of the Manolos. 

Clara rolls onto her stomach and Lex goes with her, resting on her back as she charges forward and up, towards their attackers. They balk, not expecting it, and their hesitation affords her more than enough time to peg one with her heat vision before clotheslining another. The third and final rocketeer backpedals, reversing course, flying away from them, and Lex struggles to aim through the force of the wind. The rocketeer turns to fire off a shot of her own. Clara zags out of the way, and Lex takes the shot. It pings off her jetpack, and rather than risk the ensuing fireball, the final rocketeer ejects, diving away from them into the dark, gun clutched to her chest. 

Clara skids to a slow stop, scanning the dark, and the clouds above. Then, without waiting for Lex to tell her to, she kicks off, heading away at top speed. There’s no one left to follow - the air beneath them is dotted with the distant pale shapes of escape parachutes, white and tiny as mushrooms. 

But of course, just as Lex thinks it's over, a laser comes zagging out of the dark. She sees it a second too late - it lights up the face of the final rocketeer, just before she pulls the ripcord of her own parachute. Lex yells something that might be a warning, grip tightening around Clara's shoulders. But she's too slow. The bolt strikes Clara square in the chest, and she yells, and Lex knows for certain that it hurt her, badly. No experiment necessary. 

Lex props herself against Clara's shoulder and fires back - three useless, impotent shots - but the rocketeer responsible is long out of sight and out of range. Clara's still pushing forward, but they're dropping fast. Metropolis zooms out of sight and the heartland ripples beneath them. 

“Kent,” Lex barks, and Clara makes a shuddering, animal noise. Lex tries desperately to direct her, pointing her head at the horizon, searching the ground. She prays they're heading over Missouri, squints against the wind, trying to make out the sprawling features below them, creeping ever nearer. If they get too much closer to the ground, they're going to risk being seen. 

“Kent, focus.” 

Clara can barely manage to push a word through her gritted teeth. “ _Hurts_.” 

Lex struggles not to snap at her. Of course it hurts, obviously it hurts. But if they’re spotted by a civilian or the military, that’s going to be the least of their worries. Clara has to prioritize - use that damn frontal lobe of hers for once. 

But Lex says none of this, because they’re still dropping, so low now that the air is beginning to feel warm again. 

“Aim for Mark Twain,” she growls. 

“The person?” Clara asks, breathlessly. “I think he’s dead.” 

“The _forest_ , you gormless neanderthal, aim for the _forest_.” 

And Lex can see it rushing towards them over the horizon - Mark Twain National Forest, the only real feature for miles - and she feels Clara put on a burst of speed, pushing them towards it even faster, shuddering like an engine running on fumes. When the forest springs up beneath them, they’re barely above the tips of the trees - they wind down, down, down, rapidly losing height, and Lex braces as branches whip past them, snagging her clothes, slapping her face. She shields her eyes, turns her face into the back of Clara’s neck, feeling her sag lower and lower, until finally they slam into the dirt. It blasts them, loam and branches clawing Lex’s bald head and the sides of her face, her wrists and her legs as they skid. When they finally come to a stop, it’s a few feet short of a log. A plume of dust hovers around them, thick as a mushroom cloud. 

Lex stumbles to her feet, coughing, waving her free hand to try to clear the air. Her knuckles burn with the effort of holding the gun - she fumbles, putting the safety back on before she jams it into the back of her pants. The barrel’s still hot, but she can’t bear to hold it anymore, and she’s too paranoid to risk dropping it. Without meaning to she twists her aching fingers over where her Kryptonite ring should be, missing it more than she thought she could. 

Clara lies face down at the end of the path she bore into the ground. Lex picks her way through the sticks and pine needles around her, reaching in to roll her over. She coughs a little as Lex turns her on her back, clearly still conscious. The UN Fire Prevention logo on her long-sleeved shirt is blackened and warped along the center of her chest. She puts her hand over it, face twisted with pain. 

“Good _night_ ,” she groans, “oh good _night_ , that hurts…” 

“Well, I'm sure all the clawing at it will help.” 

Clara doesn't answer except to groan. 

Lex is surprised to feel her legs wobble. She sinks down to the ground, sitting beside her, arms resting on her knees. Her breath is much more labored than she realized, heart hammering. Pine needles are sticking into her ass, the gun digging into her back, but she can't find the energy to move. Clara's shoulder is pressed to her hip. The dust dissipates slowly, and through it, Lex studies the sky above the trees, empty of everything but stars. The feeling of her own chest rising and falling is oddly meditative. 

She waits and waits for more gunfire - for pursuers. But some part of her must know none are coming. She's just postponing taking inventory at this point. To wit: a ruined wristbound; an injured Kryptonian; a traitorous second in command; and a gun with a half empty magazine. A burn across her left cheek that pangs angrily in the cold night air. A white turtleneck and matching capelet that may never recover. No ring. No warsuit. No LexCorp, no Mercy. And, assuming word gets out, no White House. 

She pinches the bridge of her nose and tries to think. Beside her, Clara releases another muted groan. 

First things first: “How bad is it.” 

Clara has the gall to sound annoyed. “It _hurts_ , Lex.” 

“On a scale of one to ten, then.” 

“It feels like somebody stuck me with a cattle prod and then peed on it. So. A seven, I guess.” 

Lex opens her eyes, and turns to look at her. 

“You'd crash land us out here for a _seven?_ ” 

Clara opens one eye and squints up at her. 

“Apparently so.” 

Lex scoffs and turns her head. “Unbelievable.” 

“Hey, any time you’d like to be the one to do all the flying, you be my guest.” 

“Shut up,” Lex tells her, but it comes out more tired than angry. 

They sit there for a while - Lex watching the sky, listening to the sounds of the forest. It unnerves her how quiet it is here. The breeze drifts through the branches of the trees. They groan softly, shifting back and forth, needles rustling like ocean waves. All of it prickles at Lex’s discomfort, runs unwelcome hands over her darkest thoughts. All at once she jerks upright, unable to sit still, coursing with nervous energy. Clara is all she has now, and she’s lying here with a burn in her chest the size of a cantaloupe. Lex fumbles her way away from her in the dark, scouring the forest floor. 

“What are you doing?” 

“Looking for-- god _dammit_ ,” Lex snarls, just as her left heel catches on a branch and snaps off. She kicks at it uselessly, then continues picking around, feeling like she’s got a peg leg. “Looking for something for your wound.” 

Clara gives her a disbelieving look. “Like what? Pine needles? Sap?” 

“I don’t _know_. Why don’t you give me some ideas? You’re a relentless stinking hick, aren’t you?” 

“Ooh,” Clara coos, trying not to grin. “That’s a worse burn than the one on my chest, Lex. Really drives at my good ol’ girl charm.” 

Lex stumbles over a root, and Clara snorts, then starts to giggle. 

“Shut up.” 

“Oh, come on,” Clara says. “You’re… what? One of the three smartest people on earth? You walk through a forest like you’re on an alien planet. That’s funny to me.” She grins. “It’s cute.” 

Lex forfeits the search before it’s even really begun and circles back to glare down at Clara. 

“I wouldn’t mock me when you’re _lying prone_ , Kent.” 

Clara screws up her face in a mock pout. “But that’s my favorite time to mock you.” 

Lex snarls and sits back down. “Just die, why don’t you.” 

“Well, I’ll do my level best,” Clara says, and lets her head sag back again. 

Lex folds her arms tighter across her legs. Her ruined shoe feels obnoxiously thin and cold where the heel broke off. Her mind circles aimlessly like a buzzard. 

“So,” Clara says, finally, “that didn’t go so great.” 

Lex scoffs and says nothing. 

“Now what?” 

Lex hasn’t the slightest idea, and so she focuses on the immediate. The quantifiable. “Can you fly?” 

Clara tries to prop herself up a little, but has to sag back down. “Not far.” She takes a beat, clearly assessing herself. “I could get us to Smallville, maybe.” 

“We’re not going to gain anything by hiding now.” Assuming they even can. Mercy’s never failed to find her before. Lex has to assume that ability will extend into their newfound enmity. 

Clara huffs. “Getting shot and going to prison isn’t really my idea of a good time either.” And then, quietly: “...and we still don’t know how to get home.” After a brief silence, she says, “What about Cadmus?” 

“It’s a top secret organization I know nothing about.” 

“Yeah, well, you’re one of the three smartest people on Earth, so I’m thinking that’s not going to present an insurmountable challenge.” 

Lex tries to ignore the way that makes her pride simmer, warm and smug. “We still can’t afford to go in unprepared. Too big a margin for error.” 

Clara sighs, but nods. “Yeah.” She purses her lips. “Listen, just… can you just talk me through what you’re thinking?” 

Lex peers at her. “Why?” 

“Because you’ve got a big brain and I can tell it’s doing stuff. And my chest hurts really bad, and that’s pretty much all I can focus on right now, which I know isn’t super useful. I want to focus on something else. Whatever’s next. Like… okay, Smallville’s not an option. I assume we can’t go back to the White House.” 

“No. We need to anticipate that anywhere we know to go is somewhere Mercy would know to look for us.” Lex’s fingers press against her lips, searching for a scar that’s no longer there. “We have to get this under control.” 

“What does that mean?” 

“It means…” What _does it_ mean? Clara Kent is currently Lex’s most valuable resource, and she’s flat on her back in the middle of a forest in Missouri. “We need to control the story. Somehow.” 

“You mean like… who knows?” Clara turns to look at her. “How much time do you think we have?” 

“Not much. A few hours. Maybe less.” 

“You think she’s gonna find people that quick who’ll believe her?” 

“If not believe her then at the very least see this for the valuable opportunity that it is. Sure, to the masses she’ll sound like a raving lunatic, but it’s not the masses that worry me. We have to get out ahead of this somehow. And if we can’t do it fast, it won’t matter. We’ll lose our chance at accessing any of the technology we would need to get home - and we’ll be trapped in a world where all our power and progress will be rendered useless by the fact that we’re imposters.” 

“...okay, that’s pretty dire.” Clara forces herself to sit with a visible shudder. She presses a hand to her chest, wincing, but doesn’t lay back down. There’s a few sticks and twigs caught in her hair, and Lex suppresses an irrational urge to brush them out. “So. Basically we have to figure out a way to control the story. And fast.” She blows out her cheeks with a sigh. “...y’know. Usually the best way to do that is to release it on your own terms - frame it the way you want it to be framed.” 

“Obviously.” 

“Okay, so... What if we found somebody else to tell? Like… now-ish. Somebody with the means to get out ahead of Mercy?” 

Her tone is deliberately leading. “I assume you have someone in mind.” 

“Yeah,” Clara says. “I do. …you’re not gonna like it.” 

Lex stares at her for a second, putting the pieces together. Then, all at once, fury ignites in her chest. 

“Absolutely not.” 

“Lex…” 

“No.” 

“ _Lex._ ” 

“If you so much as speak his name to me, I will leave you here. Don’t think I won’t.” 

“Lex, come on. Think about it. We need someone who will believe us - that means someone who knows us and is more likely to be sympathetic to our plight. Somebody who gets the science behind this whole thing and won’t immediately jump to demonic possession or alien abduction. Somebody with the means to stop Mercy, who I’ll remind you has all of LexCorp’s assets at her disposal - _and_ , to the point, someone who we know, who’ll be up at this hour. That’s a pretty narrow field of candidates. We can't not count Bruce just because you--” 

“ _Hate him_ ,” Lex snaps, standing up just to put some distance between them. “Loathe him with every fiber of my being. Would gladly tie him to the hood of my car, put a brick on the gas, and send him off a ramp directly into the mouth of an active volcano.” 

“Yeah, I know. And the feeling’s mutual. And if you can come up with a better option right now, I’ll be happy to hear it. But I don’t think you can, and it’s not because you’re not trying - it’s because, honest to God, I think this the best option we have.” 

Lex fights the urge to scream. Bruce Wayne? Like _hell_ she’s going to Bruce Wayne for help, she’d rather have her toenails pried off with a pair of rusty pliers. She refuses to be in his debt. Not again, not after last time. There’s a hundred thousand perfectly good reasons they’ve barely spoken since Excelsior, why she re-entered public life as his enemy, and they both know it. The ledger between them on both sides is so long as to render it utterly irreconcilable. She’s not looking to add to that in this or any universe. Telling Bruce is a recipe for disaster - Lord knows he’s incapable of anything but Faustian bargains. 

And yet, as she kicks a rotted piece of bark, she can’t think of anything better. There’s a rock in her gut. Her fists are clenched. She puts one hand to her mouth and she can’t stop touching the place where her scar used to be, rubbing it in circles over the blunt shapes of her teeth. 

“Lex?” 

Clara’s voice breaks through the fog of Lex’s thoughts. She looks down and finds her still lying there, looking slightly worried, which, frankly, she can’t stand. 

“Look,” Clara says. “I didn’t know when to bring this up - but I think he might have some of the technology we need to get home.” 

Lex narrows her eyes. Clara clearly takes this as her cue to continue. 

“Before we got here… he and I had been monitoring signs of some kind of temporal anomaly. We couldn’t tell what it was or how it was happening, but I’d been experiencing some kind of… temporal distortion that came in waves. He thought they were foreshocks of some oncoming temporal-spatial event. If we experienced them on our side of the multiverse, maybe this Bruce did too.” 

Lex tightens her fist, flexing her fingers against her palm. 

It’s their best option. She knows that for certain now. But that doesn’t mean she has to like it. 

“Can you make it to Gotham?” 

Clara nods a little. “I think so.” 

“With what degree of certainty?” 

“High.” 

Lex looks away from her, putting her hands on her hips. They don’t have time for her to waffle on this any longer. She breathes out through her nose. Then, she turns to Clara and puts out her hand. 

“Let’s get this over with,” she says. 

Clara looks at her and Lex isn’t sure what she’s looking for. Finally, she puts her hand in Lex’s and Lex helps her up. She’s heavy, and Lex is unsteady on her ruined shoes, but they manage to get her upright. She turns a little, jerking her thumb at her shoulder. 

“Do you mind riding on my back?” 

“I thoroughly object to absolutely every part of this,” Lex says. But she puts her arms around Clara’s neck, and Clara squats a little to accommodate her. 

“Noted.” 

And then, with a few stumbling steps, she kicks off from the forest floor, and drags them, with obvious difficulty, back up into the air. 

* * *

Clara’s crossing over rural Pennsylvania for the second time today when she really starts to regret saying she could get them to Gotham. 

She’s never exactly measured how fast she can go, flying. She knows she’s faster when she runs - she’s not sure why - but not by much. On foot, too, there are more obstacles to contend with, which basically renders any speed advantage over flying moot. She’s pretty sure that on a good day, if she’s in a hurry, she can make it to Gotham from Star City in California in about fifteen minutes. But they’ve been flying now for over thirty, and she’s not sure they’re going to make it. 

Lex is obnoxiously quiet against her back. Clara gets the feeling she’s sulking, or at the very least so deep in her head about all this that it’s futile to try and pull her out. She supposes she can’t blame her this time - Clara’s having a pretty bad night, but she knows that, burn and all, it can’t really compare to the night Lex is having. It may have been unpleasant to get shot at, but those were Lex's people taking aim at her, Mercy Graves among them. She wonders if she was wrong to push Lex to go to Metropolis tonight; not that she took much convincing, obviously, but maybe this could’ve been avoided if Clara had stuck to her own advice from this morning of looking before they leapt. She wonders if Mercy and Hope are the only two who know, or if they’ve already told people. She wonders how quickly this is going to spread. 

She wonders, honestly, if even Bruce Wayne is going to be able to help them at this point. 

She needs to stop having ideas. Between Lex’s silence and the pain in her chest, her track record for the last 24 hours is looking pretty bleak. Actually, if her even being in this universe is any indication, she should probably give up having ideas altogether. She wouldn’t even be here in the first place if she hadn’t had the boneheaded idea to leap into the abyss after Lex. 

But as they cross over the border to New Jersey, she thinks, abstractly, of Lex falling out of the sky without her there to catch her. This is a strange thought to have - no doubt borne of her own exhausted mind thumbing through irrational fears to try and keep her awake enough to fly. Lex would’ve never been in the sky at all if not for her. Might not have even been in Metropolis. But thinking of it affects her nonetheless. She finds herself reaching up to make sure Lex’s arms are secure around her neck. Maybe, she thinks, it’s fair to say that neither she nor Lex would be where they are at any given time without each other. Lex is here because of her, and she’s here because of Lex. She wonders why it doesn’t feel strange to think this. She thinks it’s probably because she feels like a steaming cow pie. 

“What?” asks Lex. 

“Nothing,” Clara lies. She realizes she’s squeezed Lex’s hand, and immediately stops, pulling back. 

She feels Lex pull a little closer to her, shuffling awkwardly to peer over her shoulder at her face. Clara stares forward, refusing to look at her, but tries to make it look innocent, like she just doesn’t notice. 

“You’re in pain,” Lex observes. 

Clara snorts. “I’ve _been_ in pain.” 

“Do you need to rest?” Lex is the only person Clara has ever met who can intone this without sympathy. Still, the question alone is jarring - like a robot asking about your day, only slightly less natural. 

“Criminy, do I look that bad?” 

“Yes,” Lex says, like she thinks Clara’s doing it on purpose. 

“Well, I’ll try to stop, if it bugs you so much.” An ominous tremor goes through her and she winces. Laser fire always does a number on her, and those rifles had been significantly more powerful than anything LexCorp has used on her in recent memory. It’s a struggle to keep flying straight, but they’re too close for her to give up now. “Besides, there’s not really any good place to set down.” 

“Oh, nonsense,” Lex says. “New Jersey is as close to an anarchist state as America has, a poorly dressed lesbian dropping out of the sky isn’t likely to cause much of an uproar.” 

Before she can decide which part of that statement she’s going to take issue with, she’s already snapping, “ _Poorly dressed?!_ ” 

“Objectively.” 

“You’re dressed like a sexy marshmallow right now and you’re gonna critique my look?” 

“Oh absolutely,” Lex says, deadly serious. “This is IRO.” 

“You’re a prick,” Clara tells her. 

“Don’t snap at me just because your cornucopia of superpowers doesn’t include a fashion sense.” 

Clara decides that as soon as they get to the cave she’s going to drop Lex in a big pile of bat guano. 

But she keeps flying, energy reserves flagging by the mile. She’s bleary eyed by the time she passes over Blüdhaven. 

Plunging through Gotham’s eternal cloud cover is always the hardest part. Clara does it this time because she doesn’t have the strength not to - into the dark, into the smog, into the air that tastes like a storm just about to break. She feels like a marathoner at the end of the race, body finally allowed to sag and to fail now that the ribbon is almost in view. She’s sure Lex can feel it. Her arms tighten around Clara’s neck in a way that might be fearful, might be protective - she’s not sure. They drop between the spires of metal, buildings jutting up around them, and head for the bay. 

“We’re close,” Lex murmurs in her ear, and even though Clara knows that, she feels oddly comforted. Close… they’re close… 

They’re almost skimming the water of Gotham Bay now. Clara can taste the ocean spray. The salt is invigorating. She blinks a little, puts on one last burst of speed. Over the gray, empty beach and across the service road, barely high enough to avoid the large stone walls that surround the manor. Past the house, then down into one of the small limestone grottos that ventilates the vehicle ramp. Through the frothy spray of the waterfall, and then the cave yawns open around them, and Clara’s winding down, prepared to faceplant a second time until she remembers Lex on her back, and manages to come to a stumbling stop, fully upright. She almost goes toppling over anyway, but Lex grabs her by her jacket and holds her upright. 

She’s dizzy, but she manages an uneven, “Thanks.” 

After a moment, she puts a hand out for the cave wall. It feels comfortingly solid against her palm. She feels a little like the way she did the last time she drank a Red Bull - like she needs to just rest her head on something and wait for the sickness to pass however it may. “Hey, are you cool if I… sit down? For a while?” Words are hard. 

“No,” Lex says, with an amount of disdain that, at this point, just seems unnecessary. 

“Okay, how about I stand here and you go tell Bruce what’s going on?” 

“Don’t be stupid, Kent.” 

Clara wonders if it’s too late to push her into that pile of bat guano. 

When she manages to pry her eyes open, Lex is standing there, her hand still knotted in Clara’s jacket. Clara hasn’t really gotten a good look at her since the firefight. Now, in the bright artificial light of the cave, she can see her. _Really_ see her: dirt stains her white clothes and her jeans, and her ruined shoe has reduced her to an undignified hobble. A burn streaks down her right cheek like a single tear. The skin of one of her knuckles is split open, though she doesn’t think she’s noticed. The gun she stole from Mercy is jammed into the back of her pants. Clara sees dark, finger-shaped bruises peeking out from under her turtleneck - Mercy’s hands, still circling her neck. 

Clara forces herself to stand. Nods to her to take the lead. 

Maybe she’s not the only one who’s tired. 

Their progression into the cave is slow and wary. Neither of them are moving too quickly, and not just because they can’t; Clara knows she’s not the only one worried about turning up uninvited for the second time in one evening. The ramp is elevated above the rest of the cave, a long, wide mezzanine leading to the hydraulic turntable beside the stone stairs leading up into the mansion. The lack of railings makes Clara nervous. She avoids looking down. 

The cave is, for its part, quiet. The bats are out, having left on their nocturnal rounds, which she suspects their human counterpart will have done as well. She’s hoping - praying, really, which she doesn’t often do - that he’ll be back by now. At the far end of the ramp, she sees the Batmobile parked on the turntable, the nose facing the Batcomputer. That’s a good sign. But there’s no one around, and the only sound is the hum of the generators and their footsteps. 

She sticks close to Lex as they move further in. Lex, for her part, is looking around like she expects it all to vanish the next time she blinks; she looks from Batcomputer to the display cases to the giant penny so rapidly that it’s almost cute. Clara takes the opportunity to look around too. Her x-ray vision has always been functionally useless in here, but her hearing works just fine, even if it’s a bit difficult to figure out which direction a sound is coming from. She motions for Lex to stop, and she does, watching as Clara tips her head. 

“He’s here,” she says. 

“How do you know?” 

“I can hear his heartbeat.” 

She takes a step forward, but Lex grabs her again and pulls her back. A ring of lights appear around them and shoot up towards to the ceiling, forming the sizzling bars of a cage. Lex’s hand squeezes Clara’s wrist and Clara feels her try not to wobble. 

She sighs and cups her mouth. 

“Bruce,” she calls. “It’s us.” She puts one hand up, but she lets Lex keep holding on to the other. For balance. Obviously. “We come in peace.” 

The room is silent for a while longer, the buzz and hum of the cage ‘bars’ the only sound. Clara scans the stalactites, the stairs, searching for him in the shadows. Then, she hears the soft drift of teflon over gravel and spins - and there he is behind her, appearing up out of the gloom in the way only he can. 

“Kal,” he says, in that deadly baritone of his. 

“Yeah,” Clara says. Then, haltingly, she pauses. Puts up one finger. Best to start with a clean slate. “Actually. No. Clara Kent. Close. But not exactly the same. ...I can get to that. Hi.” She gestures around them at the ring of lasers. “You mind? Kinda had my fill of lasers today.” 

Bruce stares at her. His expression betrays nothing - if he’s surprised to see her, unsettled by anything she’s just said, he doesn’t show it in any way. In fact, he doesn’t appear to move or react at all. 

“I told you this was a stupid idea,” Lex mutters, reaching for her gun. 

“Yeah, well, it’s _my_ stupid idea, so how about you give it a little longer than five seconds?” This time it’s Clara’s turn to grab her wrist, wrestling it back down to her side. Lex mostly lets her; Clara wonders if she’s just too tired to resist at this point. 

Bruce stands there staring at both of them for what feels like an obnoxiously long time. Then, finally, he reaches for something on his belt and flicks his fingers, and the ring of lasers disappears. 

“ _Thank_ you,” Clara says, feeling unfairly relieved. 

“Now we shoot him,” Lex suggests. 

“Would you _stop._ ” 

Bruce approaches slowly, placing his feet with deliberate care. Clara watches him come, trying not to look as nervous as she feels. Even at the best of times, Bruce makes her nervous. It’s one of her favorite things about him - that he can intimidate her, that he can make her feel small in the same way he makes anyone else feel small. It makes her feel oddly normal. But right now, his flair for the dramatic is grating on her a little. She wishes he’d be less deliberate with every little movement. Wishes she could see into that big labyrinthian head of his, but it’s probably just a big hedge maze full of cobwebs and Southern gothic imagery in there, so maybe she’s better off. 

He stops maybe four or five feet from them - close enough to look Clara directly in the eye, but far enough that she can’t reach out and grab him. Then, he flicks open a compartment of his belt, and lifts out a tiny glass vial, and before she even sees what it is, her body courses with nausea. Necrosis burns through her veins, her throat constricts - the Kryptonite is barely a sliver, a tiny needle of green, but Bruce might as well be driving it into her eye. 

She teeters and he leans forward. He draws nearer, and it's excruciating. She loses her balance, groaning, sinking to her knees, shrinking back and shielding herself with her arms as though that’s going to help. Her throat burns. Her pulse _aches._ She wills her heart to stop beating, to stop circulating the poison through her body - her fingers are blackening, and she can feel it in her toes too, like frostbite, like being burned from the inside. She can’t swallow, can’t close her mouth. She’s wheezing for breath like a fish on dry land. Her head is dizzy, her vision tunnels. It’s like the radiation is eating through her, burrowing under her skin, making every small motion excruciating. Her joints feel swollen. Her head feels heavy. If he gets any closer, she’s going to throw up, she can feel it. It feels like her skin is boiling, blistering, peeling back. An involuntary whimper makes its way up her throat. 

And then, just as she thinks she might faint, she feels Lex move. She hears the click of a gun. 

“That’s enough,” she hears Lex say, and she thinks she might be hallucinating. “You have your proof.” 

_Proof?_ Clara wonders, thoughts clumsy and uncoordinated, but before she can open her eyes, she feels Bruce pull away. There’s a soft sound of a clasp being undone and redone. And then, the source of the pain vanishes. Clara takes a wrenching, shuddering breath. When she finally does look up, Bruce has stowed the Kryptonite again. Lex is still pointing the gun at him. 

“Bruce,” Clara says, panting a little. “You get that I’m trying to convince her _not_ to shoot you.” 

Bruce stands there, seeming to take her in. She tries to do the same, but even with x-ray vision she know she’s not seeing half of what he is. He looks the same to her - same costume, same posture, same aura of authority - and even after the Kryptonite, it’s a relief. When he puts his hand out to help her up, she doesn’t hesitate the way she did with Lex. The rasp of his textured gloves tickles her hands. 

“You realize the gun renders any claim that you come in peace fairly implausible,” Bruce says. 

Clara puts her hands on her hips, and glances over at Lex. She reaches over and pushes the gun down. Lex snarls and refuses to reholster it, but she seems to at least sense that the moment is past. 

“I also have a fully functioning front door,” Bruce says. 

Clara sighs. “Figured it’d be better to wait here than risk waking Alfred. Honestly, I didn’t think you’d be back yet.” 

“I made an educated guess.” 

“About?” 

“Where you’d go next.” 

Clara feels the bottom drop out of her stomach. She swallows thickly. She suddenly doesn’t blame Lex for keeping her gun ready. 

“There was a break-in at LexCorp,” Bruce says, voice steady. “Two people posing as Kal Kent and Lex Luthor. I assume that was you.” 

“You know what they say about assuming,” Lex says, voice snide. 

Clara purses her lips, puts her hands up. “Yeah,” she says. “That was us.” She feels Lex give her a sideways look, but she stands her ground. Takes a deep breath in through her nose. “You thought we’d come here?” 

“I figured there were three options - either you’d go into hiding, head back to Washington and try to maintain the ruse… or you’d seek help.” 

“Any one of those possibilities presents with a host of unpredictable variables,” Lex sneers. “How could you possibly have known we’d come here?” 

“If you were fakes, you could have gone anywhere. Better off letting Graves carry out her manhunt. If you were genuine, there was an acceptably high likelihood that you’d go somewhere within a thousand miles of your last known location. Somewhere you considered ‘safe’ territory. Smallville and Metropolis were too dangerous.” 

“So you figured we’d come here,” Clara says. 

Bruce cocks his head in what might be a nod. “If you were smart. Your reaction to Kryptonite proves to me you're Kryptonian - or at least someone with approximately Kryptonian biology. As to who you _are_ …” 

“I’m Clara Kent,” she says. “Like I said… I'm like Kal, but… different.” She nods to Lex beside her. “Annie Oakley here _is_ Lex Luthor - just a different version. _My_ version.” 

“Very articulate,” Lex mutters. “Have you ever considered becoming a writer?” 

“I’m tired,” Clara gripes. 

Bruce appears unphased by their quiet bickering. “How did you get here.” 

Clara exhales in a woosh. “We were kind of hoping you could tell us.” 

A pang runs through her chest - so strong that it makes her head spin. 

“Listen - I can tell you everything we know. That’s what we came here to do. Just… can we do it sitting down? Please?” 

* * *

Clara's been in the Batcave any number of times - in all of her visits, she can only ever remember there being one chair. But Bruce manages to summon another two out of thin air, and they're forced to awkwardly sit across him while he regards them from the large chair in front of the Batcomputer. 

Beside her, Lex lounges in a way that’s distinctly hostile. When she sat down, she’d nonchalantly hooked her one intact shoe over her knee and snapped the heel off in one sharp, violent motion, with a crack like she’d broken bone. Then, she’d tossed it at Bruce’s feet, planted her own on the ground again, and slumped back in her chair, managing to look less like an unruly teenager and more like a displaced, disgruntled royal. She hasn’t broken eye contact with Bruce since. One of her elbows rests on the armrests; the other holds her gun in a casual sort of way, lying in her lap, ready to be pointed at anything with the misfortune to draw her eye. She doesn’t showcase even passing curiosity about the room around them, now - she stares directly at Bruce, clearly planning to attack him the second their temporary armistice dissolves. Clara tries not to let this make her nervous, but the whole situation makes her nervous, so it’s a ultimately a futile effort. 

She tries to keep her explanation as brief and uncomplicated as possible, but without any guiding questions she thinks what she ends up with is insufficient and clumsy instead. Bruce watches her through the cowl, fingers bridged. 

“So. I’m Clara. This is Lex. You know us - not _us_ us, but a version of us - and we know you - not _you_ you, but-- you get it. About twenty-four hours ago - or, at least, what it feels like to _us_ was twenty-four hours, I guess there’s no telling - we were… I guess _swapped_ with your version of us? At least, that’s what I hope happened - we ended up here, and they hopefully ended up where we come from. Which is… I guess another reality? Dimension?” 

“Universe,” Lex says. 

Clara stumbles, distracted, mumbling almost under her breath. “Are you sure?” 

“Positive,” Lex says, still staring straight at Bruce. 

“Okay. Another universe. There was some kind of… temporal-spatial distortion, and… here we are.” 

“When did you arrive.” Bruce never manages to make his questions sound like questions. 

“This morning,” Clara says. “Around 7. Ish. Or… I mean, at least, that’s when we woke up, I guess we could have technically arrived earlier than that.” 

“At which point you proceeded to impersonate your counterparts in our universe.” 

Lex rolls her eyes, but Clara stays her snide comment with a hand. “It seemed like the best possible option at the time. We still hadn’t figured out exactly what had happened. By the time we had a decent grasp of what was going on, we realized that if we told anyone we risked destabilizing the political landscape on an international level.” 

She can’t tell if this is an acceptable answer or not. Bruce’s tone remains low and flat. “Why risk going to LexCorp.” 

“We didn’t think it was much of a risk. Thought we could use one of Lex’s labs to start working out how to get home.” 

Bruce studies her for a while, then says, “Why bother.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“I mean: you landed somewhere fairly attractive. Why try to return home at all.” 

Clara hears Lex scoff. “Bold to assume this universe is any more attractive than what our native universe has to offer,” she says. 

Clara doesn't give her the chance to say anything else that might start a fight. “Because it's our home,” she says. “It's where we belong. We didn't come here on purpose. Why wouldn't we try to go back?” 

Bruce seems to ponder this for a long time - or maybe he's just waiting to see if they'll crack under the unflinching pressure inflicted by his silence. Finally, he sits back in his chair, seeming satisfied. 

“We've had tangles with possession before. Especially you,” Bruce says, nodding to Lex. “In several instances, you've been possessed, impersonated, cloned, brainwashed, or otherwise controlled by extraterrestrial entities, artificial intelligences, and, in one instance, your wife.” 

Clara turns and gives Lex a look. “You had a wife…?” 

“Not anymore,” Lex says, as though she personally relishes dispatching of a woman who never actually did _her_ any wrong. She taps her toe slowly. “How lucky you are to have finally landed a Lex Luthor who can rightfully claim to be a master of her own mind. You’ve clearly been making due with an inferior model. Really, with all that, it’s a surprise that she was ever lucid at all.” 

“Lex,” Clara chides, though she’s not sure what, exactly, she’s getting after her for. It seems weird to listen to Lex insult another version of herself the way she insults… well, everyone else, really. 

“By that account it sounds like you should really be thanking us,” Lex goes on. 

Bruce seems to find this almost funny. “For what.” 

“Let’s start with introducing a heretofore unprecedented level of stability and competence to your political leadership and go from there.” 

“You’re sitting here because you couldn’t bother to google who was in charge of LexCorp,” Bruce says. “I’ll save my thanks for now.” 

The legs of Lex’s chair squeal as she sits forward. Clara rests her hand on her forehead, then reaches over and seatbelts Lex in with her arm, pushing her back. 

“We _did_ google it,” she says, fed up with both of them. 

“Reading comprehension not one in your many bags of tricks, Luthor?” It’s the first question that sounds like a question, but it isn’t one. It’s bait Lex is scrabbling to take a bite of, like she doesn’t know better than to fight Bruce on his home turf. 

“Detecting a Kryptonian through more sophisticated means than Kryptonite exposure isn’t in yours?” 

“Okay, cool it,” Clara says. “Listen…” She has to take a moment to dial back her annoyance. “We’re not trying to do anything insidious - we’re here by accident. We’re just trying to get back to where we came from, and not screw up your universe in the process.” 

Bruce shifts, clearly feeling a little robbed of the brawl he was stoking. “You realize tipping off Mercy Graves was perhaps the worst possible way to do that.” 

“Well, yeah, _now_ we do. But that wasn’t really the plan.” 

“No,” he agrees. “Massive strategic blunders typically aren’t.” 

Lex wiggles her chin like she’s picking which teeth she’s going to sink into him first. “Would you consider _losing your President_ a massive strategic blunder or a minor one? Given your apparently extensive history of allowing her to be impersonated, brainwashed, and possessed. Where does this rank, on a scale of your personal and _storied_ ineptitude?” 

Bruce’s eyes narrow under the cowl. 

“Would you two _knock it off?_ ” Clara says, annoyance flushing her chest. “Bruce. We came to you for a few reasons - one was that, in our universe, you and I had been monitoring some sort of temporal-spatial anomaly… I think that’s what brought us here. I thought that if you’d been able to monitor it in one universe, there was a chance you’d be monitoring it in this one.” 

Bruce turns his head to look at her, sufficiently distracted from Lex. 

“You and I,” he repeats. 

“Yeah...?” 

“You’re not Superwoman in this universe,” Lex reminds her, voice cool. 

Clara very nearly smacks her forehead. “Right. I guess that would be weird for you and Kal to…” She trails off. God, why does it hurt so much to be reminded of that? Her chest aches in a way that has nothing to do with her burn. “You’re just going to have to trust me that in my home universe it’s pretty normal for us to work together on things like that.” 

Bruce watches her intently, a meditative quality to him. He flexes his fingers slowly, and she hopes she doesn’t look too ridiculous - no costume, no glasses, just her own dumb face with a worried expression she can’t shake. Her hair’s a snarled mess, she can feel it; the UN Fire Prevention logo a melted blob on her chest. 

“I trust you,” he says. 

Clara’s heart floods, instantly, with warmth. Relief. All at once, the pain in her body seems to fade. Joyous fireworks implode in her ears. All at once she feels compelled to leap across the floor and hug him. 

“A positively idiotic decision,” says Lex. 

Her relief stumbles. 

She gives Lex a sideways look - incredulous, irked - and finds her wearing that grimacing-grin of hers, that bitter almost-smile that’s all bite and no bark. Resentment billows off her in waves, and Clara can’t for the life of her imagine why. 

“Do you seriously have to pick a fight every ten seconds?” Clara asks. 

“I was talking about you.” 

Clara blinks. “That doesn’t really invalidate my point,” she points out, but she’s also trying not to look as surprised as she feels. 

“You’re really ready to spin him a yarn about everything we know in exchange for… what, precisely? He’s offered us nothing.” 

This is true, but it still catches Clara off her guard. “I didn’t think we were really to the ‘negotiation’ portion of the evening.” 

Lex scoffs. “That’s why I run a multibillion dollar corporation and you work as a over-inflated air taxi. We’ve been in the ‘negotiation portion’ of the evening since we landed.” 

“I didn’t leave you in the Laser Ring,” Bruce says. 

“Oh, how _very_ gracious,” Lex croons mockingly. “Nevermind, he didn’t _leave us in a cage_ \- by all means, tell him everything.” 

Clara opens her mouth to rebuff her, but stops. She bites down on what she was about to say and chews it for a second, trying to get a taste of what Lex is expecting exactly. She doesn’t _barter_ with Bruce, that’s never been who they are to each other - she’s never needed to work him over or manipulate him to gain his cooperation, and to do so now feels deeply wrong to her in every way. He let them in. Clara knows what a big gesture that was, even if Lex doesn’t. He thinks they’re telling the truth; he trusts them, or at least her. That’s an incredible concession, but Lex doesn’t have the context to know that. And… well, maybe she’s not entirely wrong to want more than that. Some kind of concession; clemency that goes beyond just listening. 

“What are you looking for?” she asks Lex. 

“An arrangement. Quid pro quo. We tell him what we know, he gives us what we need. We didn’t come here to chat.” 

Bruce looks between them. “What are you expecting.” 

“We could use some help,” Clara says. 

“With convincing the public that you are who you pretend to be.” 

Clara finds herself off-balance for the second time in as many minutes. She tries not to wear it on her face this time. “Bruce… we’re not trying to stage a coup, or anything. We’re really trying to get home - can you honestly say it’s going to be better for everyone involved if it comes out that the President’s been body swapped with a Lex Luthor from another universe?” 

“What you’re describing would constitute a fraud on international proportions.” 

“I… well. Yeah. For… y’know, a little bit.” 

Bruce folds his arms slowly. “How long is ‘a little bit.’” 

“I mean… as long as it takes for us to get home. Which would be a lot easier with your help, now that I’m saying it out loud. I don’t know. It depends.” 

“Guess.” 

Clara shifts uneasily, biting the inside of her cheek and pinching her lips together. “I don’t know. A week? Maybe a month?” 

“A _month,_ ” Bruce repeats. “You would like my help to facilitate a _month_ during which an unqualified stranger will be impersonating the President of the United States, making key decisions about domestic and foreign policy.” 

“ _Unqualified?_ ” Lex barks. Clara seatbelts her in with her arm again, but she actually feels the same kick of offense as he says it. 

“Lex is qualified,” she says, with more insistence than she expected to. Maybe she just wants to make sure he believes her; maybe she’s desperate, and this is their only option. (Her problem was never that Lex wasn’t _qualified_ to govern, honestly.) “She was running for president in our universe, too. Obviously, we’ll have a lot of catch up to do, but she’s not going to plunge the country into a second civil war or something.” 

“You’re proposing I give the nuclear launch codes to someone who has been in this universe for just over a day.” 

“As if I didn’t already know the nuclear launch codes,” Lex scoffs. 

“Yeah,” Clara says, running a nervous tongue over her top lip. “Not forever, just… for a little while.” 

“I’m a goddamn Mensan,” Lex says. “I think I can handle the presidency for a month or two.” 

“You’re not the only Mensan in the room,” Bruce growls. “But if you can’t figure out why I refuse to allow _you_ within arm’s reach of the button, maybe your membership should be revoked.” 

“Yeah, we get it,” Clara says, thoroughly fed up. “You’re both super duper smart. The smartest. I assume that’s why you haven’t stopped fighting since we got here, but hey, what do I know? They should have another organization for difficult jackasses, bet you’d be in that one too.” 

Both of them turning to look at her doesn’t make her feel any less annoyed. “Listen to me. Bruce? I’m gonna tell you what I told Lex before we came to you: if you can think of a better idea, I’m all ears.” 

Bruce stares at her, deadpan. “Better than handing you the presidency.” 

Clara doesn’t flinch. She sits very still and looks straight at him, because she’s learned that that’s the best way to do it. She says, “Yeah.” 

Bruce sits very still, not seeming to so much as breathe or blink. He stares at her, eyes slightly narrowed, for what feels like a very long time. Clara’s annoyed enough with him that she just stares back. Then, when they’ve been staring at each other for what feels like a very long time, she raises her eyebrow in an unspoken question and he sighs and looks away. 

“Convince me,” he says, gruffly. 

“Excuse me?” Lex says. 

“You want me to hand you the reins of this country, get Graves to stand down, and give you access to technology with the potential to rip a hole in the spacetime continuum. Convince me that’s a good idea.” 

“Okay,” Clara says. “How can I do that?” 

“Give me some reason to believe this version of Lex Luthor can be trusted.” 

Clara pauses, even as Lex bristles in her periphery. She tries not to look like she’s scrambling to think of anything - this is why she doesn’t play poker. 

A reason to trust Lex. Does she even have one? She barely trusts Lex herself, and even that isn’t really anything more than a confidence that Lex will act… the way Lex acts. Making sure she stays the president isn’t so much something Clara’s doing out of some misplaced faith in Lex’s ability to lead - it’s just the one real option they have. She might not be a Mensan but she's smart enough to know that getting outed now won't be good. Kal Kent doesn't have much of a life as far as Clara can tell, but what she does have is definitely better than… what? Prison, probably. Federal custody. Clara’s skin crawls at the idea of being locked up, dissected. _Don't go there_ , she tells herself, _don't even go there._ All she needs to do is think of one good reason for Lex to be president that isn’t, ‘because I'm scared of what will happen if she's not.’ 

She swallows. And then she says, “When I told her we needed to come here and get help, she said yes.” 

Bruce scrutinizes her. “And in your mind, that proves what about her.” 

“Well, if she can trust my judgement and yours, trusting hers seems like the least you could do.” 

It's a weak argument, but it's the best one she's got. She holds her breath and waits. Finally, Bruce offers a tiny nod. 

“If word gets out, it's going to be chaos,” he says. “We need to keep this Need To Know, for now. And work on reversing it as quickly as possible.” 

“Oh thank god,” Clara breathes. 

“And if we're going to do that, you two need some serious acting help.” 

Once again, Clara's relief trips over her tongue. “We need what now?” 

Bruce gives her a look that says a million things at once. But he settles on, “You're nothing like Kal. And you've got a terrible poker face.” 

From beside her, Lex snorts. 

“Congratulations,” she says. “ _You're_ the weak link.” 


End file.
